The Average People
by Doctor Shemp
Summary: Nobody is normal. To be totally average is the opposite of normal. Sometimes we see people that we think are strange, abnormal-something to be gossiped about and avoided on the street. We never realize how strange we are ourselves. :Post Minerva's Den:
1. A Wolf in a Warm Smile

_Whisper, whisper, in your ear. _

_ Have you heard of the thing that was, or wasn't?_

_ LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN TO MEEEE!_

_ Smallpox, ebola, cholera, typhoid... all swimming around in the muck under your nails..._

_ Take home some of the literature. Take your time in making a decision. The Rapture Family is always open, any time of day._

_ ..._

_ IT'S A MONSTER!_

Heart hammering in his ears, Lester snapped awake, terrified and disoriented. He lied there for several moments, unable to remember where he was or what had happened. The chaotic dream drained away as he stumbled into wakedness, becoming a tangled mess of screaming and darkness. As it did every night, the dream stole away as suddenly as it came, leaving him confused and unable to sleep further.

Sighing, Lester sat up and swung his legs over the side of his bed. The dim numbers on the newfangled clock he couldn't set read one 'o clock, AM; that meant... (he did some drowsy math in his head) he had gotten about three and a fourth hours of sleep in the last twenty-four hours. Same as yesterday, and the day before that.

During the day, Lester did everything he could not to collapse or start screaming from exhaustion. The pills the doctor had given him to treat his insomnia couldn't stop his nightmares, and they didn't make medicine that could. It was distressing to Lester to know that there was something wrong with him that doctors and medicine couldn't fix, as if he had some sort of incurable disease that he could only wait out until it killed him.

_DISEASE! WASTE! ROT! All in the dirt and the muck and the darkness!_

A violent tremor suddenly gripped him, throwing him to the floor and shaking him like a doll. The fit only lasted a few seconds, and it passed without further event. It left him numb and barely breathing, unable to move or think. A few minutes later, all was well again. He was able to sit up, take a few breaths, and rub the feeling back into his extremities. That was another thing; they made medicine to stop his fits, but they didn't know what caused them in the first place.

Lester knew. He knew that it was _him _trying to get out. The monster. The Spider.

By the time the sun rose in the morning, Lester had not slept much. A few winks, here and there, but that was it. At least he didn't have any more seizures or nightmares; they were banished by a dose of his antiseizure pills and a few pages of the Good Book. Still, no sleep came. He sat up for hours and hours, just staring out the window at the city outside. No people walked past his window that night, giving him no distractions.

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, Lester would watch the street that his bedroom window overlooked. People passed by all night long, either on foot, wrapped in thick coats and scarves, or in motorcars, speeding by without a care for the people shuffling along on the sidewalk. Seeing them calmed him down, and made him feel safe. Surely, with all these normal people walking around, living normal lives in a normal city, there was no place for monsters. Monsters don't exist in such average, padded worlds: they live in dark, mysterious places where streetlights don't reach. Shadowy woods and black caves...

And underwater cities.

He smacked his head hard with his palm. There's no such thing, he told himself. No such thing! There is no Rapture. There are no Splicers. No ADAM. No Rapture Family. None of that ever happened, or so said his therapists. All those reassuring voices had told him over and over again that it was all some horrible dream conjured by him to cope with some unimaginable trauma.

Perhaps he had been imprisoned by horribly abusive parents, humiliated and tortured until he had taken on a strange, animal-like persona. Maybe he had grown up alone in the forest among wolves. It was all unclear, and years of therapy had produced no answers.

All he had that he could prove was the fact that he had been hideously scarred by his experience, and that he had undergone extensive surgery to repair those scars. A few remained: the left side of his face was missing most of its cheekbone, and the eye was damaged and full of cataracts. There were huge pox in his shoulders, legs and face where they had dug out abscesses and strange tumors, and his hands and feet were disfigured beyond repair. He had to keep his feet wrapped all the time to prevent the bones they had to break from drifting apart again.

That was all he had to visit during the night. No wonder he meandered in fantasy.

When the clock read eight o' clock, there was little Lester could do besides get up and get ready. He had taken all of his sick days already, and his boss was losing his patience. Slowly, with aching joints and heavy limbs, he pulled on his long, thin trousers and fluffy white dress shirt, brushed his few yellowed teeth, and carefully treated the gaping rip in his bald scalp before placing his black fedora over the whole mess.

He looked in his bathroom mirror, running a hand over his ruined features. What had he looked like before... this? Had he been handsome? Something about his sharp eyes and strong jaw suggested something at least an inch above hideousness, but it was long buried under scar tissue and deep frown lines. A lot of people would be turned off by his one damaged eye, let alone his bald, flaking head or his strange, misshapen body. Every part of him had something wrong with it, right down to his long, arthritic toes.

Breakfast couldn't last long enough. Lester halfheartedly chewed a Cup 'O Noodles and downed a cup of coffee with his morning medications, all the while staring out the window with misty eyes. The sky was gray and threatening rain, the dark clouds pressing down on the tops of the buildings and the backs of the people. Everyone outside was bent with effort as they walked, fighting the wind.

Shouldering on his long black coat, Lester stepped out of his apartment and into the hallway. Like the rest of his home, and like Lester himself, the hall was dark, dingy and coated in a fine layer of dust. The gloom hung in the air like a tangible miasma, making him cough and want to pull his woolen scarf tighter around his face. At least he felt a little less ugly all bundled up, a layer of softness and warmth between him and the world. It was safe, comfortable, and familiar, even though he didn't have much that he was familiar with: even though he didn't have any memories, it was nice to feel something that he almost remembered. A feeling, something he knew he had felt before, even though he didn't have any words or images to express it. It was the same thing he felt when he saw... _her_.

Jacquelyn Turner, the most beautiful woman he had ever met. (Well, one of the only women he could remember.) She lived down the street from him and worked at the municipal library across from the building where he worked- so it was like destiny. He got to see her every day when he bicycled to his dull little office job, and again when he stopped at the library to check out a book. Lately, he had been spending more and more time there, choosing to read in one of the huge, fluffy chairs with a free cup of coffee instead of alone in his dark apartment. All the while he stole looks at Miss Jackie, who sat behind the counter, chewing bubble gum and looking lovely.

Sometimes she'd even smile at him; it was the most wonderful feeling in the world. Her smile was small and shy, gentle, suiting her quite, mousey personality. Kindness showed in her calm green eyes, and it was adorable when she brushed a lock of her dark brown hair away from them. Every part of her was pretty and perfect, just like every part of him was misshapen and strange. Still, he thought he had a chance- she was, after all, so kind and good and pure that even someone ugly like him had her respect.

It was all in that wonderful smile she gave him.

He went on down the stairs, putting on his sunglasses and checking his pockets to make sure he had his pills. Satisfied, he crossed the lobby, ignoring the doorman's poisonous looks. That man didn't like him, for whatever reason. Maybe it was something he had said.

Outside, the air was crisp and cold. Lester settled deeper into his coat, stuffing his hands into his pockets. His breath puffed visibly in the chill air, and immediately he felt cold inside and out. The elements fought him as he made his way through the brown, frost-blighted courtyard and to the shed where his bike was parked, and the wind blew so hard it threatened to push him and his bike over.

At least the wind was at his back as he coasted down the street toward the office, and by the time he turned at the corner of Hadley and Arkham, the sun had even started to come out. Immediately Lester felt hot and uncomfortable under his heavy clothing and with the effort of pedaling.

But even if it was warm, his hat would never come off; even his doctors had advised him to cover up his bizarrely shaped skull, as it made even them uncomfortable. Lester didn't know what was so strange about it- all that was wrong was that his forehead sloped back in an odd way, making his head look a bit like an egg, or a bullet.

After five minutes, the squat shape of the library came into view. Lester stopped short, grinding the gears of his bike horribly. He sat there, just staring at the front end of the building, not even really knowing what he was doing. His pulse quickened: would she be there? Could he catch a glance of Miss Jackie as she walked into work, skipping along at that brisk, purposeful pace that made it seem like she always had somewhere to go or someone to meet.

Yes! There she was: he saw her dark blue sweater coming out of her dark blue motor coach in the parking lot. She walked that sprightly walk to the building, hugging her arms around her chest to keep warm. Even though Lester's vision was poor, he could still marvel at how lovely she was from across the street.

Did she see him? She was looking right at him now- he turned away, and pretended to keep pedaling down the street. Eyes down, shoulders even more slumped, looking uninterested and miserable. He couldn't look up to see if she was still watching, but he could still feel her eyes on him. Shame and embarrassment heated his pale face, and it felt even worse when he realized she could see it. Before he could humiliate himself any further, he managed to jump off his bike, lock it up with shaking hands, and duck into his office.

In the safety of the building, he dug out his pills and swallowed one dry. The doctors had warned him about excess stress or anxiety, as it could trigger his fits or worsen his other conditions. What they had meant by... "other conditions," he didn't know. Or maybe he _did _know.

No, no no! It's not true. All of that nonsense was just that: nonsense. He wasn't a monster, and no malevolent force existed within him. He didn't have a secret, only a pathetic life of tragedy at the hands of some very disturbed people- the real monsters, and the only kind of monsters that exist: totally human ones. His condition was just that: only a medical condition that he could treat and control, one that had no consciousness of its own.

And that was that.

He hurried up to the third floor, choosing the stairs over the elevator. (Elevators made him terribly nervous.) Just in time, he dashed through the door, turned the corner and stuffed his timecard into the machine outside the office door as the clock hit nine 'o clock. Another day, another dollar. The door opened to the drab chamber of a hundred gray cubicles, and the sound a hundred pencils flicking over a hundred payment forms and copying them in triplicate. A hundred gears ground their teeth to dust to keep the machine of Eckholdt Private Insurance Limited alive.

Sighing, Lester found his desk and sank into his uncomfortable chair. He rubbed his temples, frowning deeply as he went over all he had to do that day. His low-level job had all the miserable grunt work that the higher-up, more educated employees didn't have time to do. Appointments, calendars, company events... boring, but it paid the bills.

Lester couldn't help but think he was above the job that he did; although he didn't like to brag, Lester _was _very intelligent. Without explanation, he had a frenzied passion for mathematics, and often did figures in a little notebook for fun. His long, nimble fingers could work faster than everyone at the office at even the most complicated problems, though it never did anything for his position. On the contrary: it only made him more strange.

"Hey, O'Hara!"

A gruff voice made Lester jump. His head sunk into his shoulders, and he pretended to be busy. In his head, he told himself to stay calm and just ignore the brute. Too late. Billy Marrdock leaned into his cubicle, a crocodile smile hanging on his doughy face.

"Oh. Hello, Billy. How are you?" Lester said, straightening.

Billy's smile grew even wider, and an ugly chuckle wheezed out of him like gas out of something dead. "Heh... heh heh. I'm just fine, O'Hara, but you ain't looking so good yourself. I think you should see a doctor about that thing on your face."

Panicked, Lester's hand went to his face. Billy laughed, and his watery eyes almost rolled back into his fat face. Lester realized with humiliation that he had been tricked.

"Hur hur hur HARF! Oh, sorry. Looks like it was just your nose!" Billy said, unable to contain himself. It took a huge effort for Lester to stay in his seat. His hand curled into a fist, and something inside of him twisted and struggled, raking its claws against his innards and making horrible sounds that only he could hear.

_GRAAAHH! Kill him! Kill kill kill kill! Gene slave! Backslider! Kill the nonbeliever, now! _

A tiny whimper escaped him, but he stayed silent. His fist relaxed, and he swallowed the rage back down. Without a word, he turned back to his desk and started his work. This drew an angry huff from Billy, who was always trying to bait a reaction out of him; Lester was determined not to give him the satisfaction.

"Freak." Billy snorted. "I know there's crazy in you. You're always sitting there, all twitchy and weird-like. Never talking, never doing anything, just staring with your big fish eyes in your ugly lizard head." He smiled, showing small teeth. "Yeah, that's what you are: a lizard."

Still chuckling to himself, Billy walked off, leaving Lester shaky and full of anger. He grumbled, cursing Marrdock for being an idiot and himself for being a coward. The feeling boiled over, and the paper he had pretended to work on crumpled in his grip; inside, the... _thing _was restless, drool dripping from its figurative maw, figurative claws flexing dangerously.

_The doc says you should kill him. The doc says you can't change. The doc says to sever all ties. _

"Stop, stop stop!" Lester whispered, smacking the side of his head. What was happening? He never heard _voices _before, and certainly not voices that said such awful things. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his fear grew; he was crazy, psychopathic even! He had a voice in his head that told him to kill people! How on Earth had his doctors missed this, and why was he feeling it now of all times?

He swallowed when he realized the implications. What if it was true- what if he was something dangerous?

Once again, he reprimanded himself. That was so silly it almost made him laugh. Almost. Still, it was entirely stupid and preposterous: maybe he had made a mistake with his medication, or perhaps it was a symptom caused by his lack of sleep. No matter what strange things his tormented psyche did, it did not make that place any more real, or make him any more of anything but a sad, miserable man.

Splicers don't exist.

Fortunately, the rest of the day went by without incident. He managed not to kill anyone, and as long as he avoided Billy and his jibes, the strange new tenant in his head stayed quiet. All day he managed to keep his fear swallowed down and hidden, but inside he was in a constant state of terror and close to tears.

Five. By that time, Lester had his head down and his teeth were cutting deep into his tongue, he was so tense and afraid. Auras came almost constantly, his confused, nervous brain sending desperate distress signals to him. It was even worse now that he had taken the maximum dosage of his medication, and it still wasn't stopping his anxiety. Nothing could stop his knees quaking or the rush of violent auras from gluing him to his chair, which was shaking as much as he was.

As soon as the last bell at the warehouse downstairs went off, Lester nearly flew out of his seat and out the door. He didn't even time out; all he could see were the doors and the way to the safety of his apartment. It wasn't until he got outside and saw the library next door did he snap back to reality: what about Miss Jackie?

Horror dawned on him when he realized that now, with this new, strange disorder he had, he could possibly hurt her, even kill her. Right now, however, he couldn't afford to worry about that: he had to get home and... do something! Stop this from happening, maybe.

The sun was going down. Leaving his bike behind, Lester ran his awkward, stooping run down the street and to his building.

He didn't see the young lady watching him from the parking lot across the street, who had noticed him staring at her that morning. She pursed her lips in confusion and concern, unable to understand and unwilling to investigate. That man was strange, and before she had moved to the city, her parents had warned her about strange men. So, without another thought about him, she hopped hurriedly into her car and drove off.

As if he were being chased, Lester slammed his front door closed and slumped against it, gasping for breath after his run. His hands were quaking violently, and his stomach bucked wildly with every movement. Now he was having strange, unbearable pains in every part of his body, making everything much, much worse.

What was happening to him? Everything was getting blurry as his eyes lost focus, and his whole body began to shake. It wasn't like one of his fits- it was much more painful and physical than any one he had before, and the tremors were far more intense. It was like the whole room, no, the whole world was tossing him up and down like he didn't weigh anything at all, and it showed no sign of stopping. For what felt like hours it went on and on, until finally he was left twitching and strangled on the floor.

At least it was over. Slowly, carefully, Lester pushed himself up and took a breath. Something felt different. Something felt wrong.

Desperate, he swallowed one of his pills, ignoring his instructions. He figured it would come back to bite him, but this probably counted as an emergency. After a few minutes, everything seemed better, and the medication seemed to be taking effect. He relaxed, taking a few deep breaths and fighting to keep calm.

Then it happened. All of reality fell apart.

A horrible, inhuman scream ripped out of him as something deep inside of him gave a great lurch. There was a creaking noise, although he had to have imagined it, but soon the creaking gave way to a grinding, snapping, groaning noise, like a plank of wood being bent in machinery. Lester screamed again when he realized it was his spine.

It had to be his imagination! There was no way that sound was... there was no way! The pain was getting worse, and it was radiating to every part of his body. He retched, coughing up his pill, most of his lunch and then his breakfast, before flopping uselessly on his back and struggling for a breath. No chance came, as he was up and seizing again a second later. The grinding went on, and suddenly he felt like he was being forced to curl into a ball, like a huge hand was pulling him apart and then crushing him into a little lump. This was it. His body was failing, and he was going to die.

But he didn't die. He lived on, and the strange sensations continued. His trousers were getting uncomfortably tight without explanation, and so were his shoes. Drool dribbled down his chin as his jaw popped out of place and his neck snapped around, the motion slinging thick, slimy stuff onto the walls. Something fell from his face with a splat onto the floor, and it felt like someone was pulling on the loose skin on the back of his head. Pins and needles spread all over him, and the tightness grew worse all over, too. His limbs hurt the most, and his elbows and kneecaps popped loudly, as if they were being struck. But then, almost anticlimactically, it stopped. All was quiet.

Lester laid on the ground, unable to see or feel anything. He wasn't aware of his shoes finally giving way and popping off his feet, or the large rip growing on the back of his jacket. He wasn't aware of anything.

Snuffling, he pushed himself up, and peered around nervously. Heavy, hot breath puffed out of his crooked mouth, spattering foam and drool on the floor. His one good eye scanned the room, flashing in the last bit of sunlight, but dull with animal stupidity. Lester O'Hara wasn't home anymore: only the man- the _creature _he used to be.

_Where am I? What happened?_

Unable to understand the situation, Lester could only watch through its eyes as the Spider flexed its new claws and stretched its new, gangly limbs. It took a moment for him to discover that he wasn't alone in his body anymore.

_It's real! I always knew it was real! I'm a monster, I was always a monster! _

The Spider sat, arching its back to remove more of its restricting clothes. The rip in Lester's jacket grew until the whole thing simply tore off and fell to the floor, leaving him in his shirt. His poor trousers came along soon after, ripping away from the Spider's much wider, more muscular hindquarters. With a shake like a dog, the Spider stepped out Lester's outer clothes and stretched again with a hideous smile. Lester felt its pleasure, too- it sickened him.

Hijacked in his own body, Lester was totally helpless. The only thing he could do was move the thing's eyes a little bit, and that let him see what had happened. His horror made the thing laugh.

In the bathroom mirror, which he could see through the open door, he could see a huge, pale shape. Crouched gracefully on all fours, it stretched six and a half feet from head to toes. It had wide, dexterous feet with long, curved claws, and spindly fingers that twitched, itchy to do something terrible. Hunchbacked and fang-faced, the creature he had become was something out of his nightmares.

It was from his nightmares. This was the voice whispering in his head; this was the thing crawling under his skin. This was Phineas Hull, the man he was born as. The genius mathematician who was invited to the secret underwater city of Rapture by Andrew Ryan, only to destroy his brilliant mind with splicing and lose every bit of sanity, dignity, and humanity to Doctor Sophia Lamb and her Rapture Family. She had taken him and turned him into a mindless killing machine, a Spider Splicer, built to eliminate enemies of the collective and pray to her bar sinister child.

But what happened? What happened to Phineas the monster that turned him into Lester the man? He didn't have time to ponder, as Phineas had better things to do beside lay around and let his passenger think.

With a mighty kick, Phineas launched off the ground and crashed through a nearby window. He charged off into the growing night, screaming and cawing like a wild animal as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop on his long, powerful limbs. Lester couldn't fight his will, not even if he tried: Phineas owned this body first, and was determined to keep it.

His consciousness growing weak, Lester exerted his last bit of strength to steer the creature's eyes away from Miss Jackie's house. It worked, and Phineas thundered off far away from the one person Lester could protect from him.

As the sun sank under the horizon, Lester O'Hara disappeared with it. Dark and smothering as smoke, a sort of unconsciousness overtook him. His vision melted away, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Now the night belonged to the Spider.

##################

**ON WRITING SPLICERS:**

** As a long-time member of the Bioshock fandom, I've always been confused by the fixation on Big Daddies and Little Sisters. Certainly, they're very sad, unfortunate creatures, but that's all they really are: creatures. Each one, at least in-game, has the exact same personality and traits as every other one. Even if the LSs still have human minds and some higher form of thought, they're only children, and children have a more limited range of emotions than adults in addition to their lack of life experience. The Big Daddies do not even have this: although they _can_ be humanized, there's only so much the big, lovable brutes can do as characters. Another trend I've noticed is that, despite Levine's efforts to make them both sympathetic _and _relatable, most people tend to cast Splicers as either totally heartless and almost demonically irredeemable villains, or as faceless cannon fodder, or as a person who retains their superpowers without the side effects of insanity and deformity, removing some of the drama from what makes the Splicer character. Of course, this is not always the case, and I have enjoyed many stories built on these very principles, but what I've always wanted is a story where truly monstrous Splicers are cast as the human beings they are. **

**TL;DR: I love Splicers. They're fun to write and think about. So I ranted a little bit about them, and sounded like a total jerk about it. :D **


	2. A Glass Manor

Sasha wasn't happy.

She knew that she _should_ be happy, and that she _could _be happy, and even that she _would _be happy, if things were different. But there was no changing the circumstances, and with these circumstances she knew, in every part of her, no good would come.

That morning, she was sitting in the sun-warmed solarium, flipping with disinterest through a women's magazine. Her leg was nagging her, and with her free hand she rubbed the damaged kneecap through her skirt and thick bandages. Even though the atrium was warm and familiar, it felt chilly and lonely to her- far from home, even though she was home.

She sighed, closed the magazine, and with a huff slung it across the room. The paper fluttered like a broken bird before landing in the fountain with a muffled splash. Crossing her arms like a frustrated child, she gave a shrill call for Charles, who since she had arrived had pretended like she didn't exist. He didn't respond, irking her further; her brother didn't care at all about her! She could have fallen into the koi pond and he wouldn't have even noticed.

'Charrrreeellllss! Get your sorry toffet in here, you buffoon!" She screamed, growing very cross. Finally she heard the sound of loud, angry footsteps coming from the main building; Charles was taking his time, of course, as it took him several moments just to get across the parlor to the atrium door. When he opened the door, Sasha had a poisonous look ready to fire at him.

"What could it be, dear sister?" He asked, his voice gruff and twisted with sarcasm. "I can't think of a single thing Princess Sasha could possibly want."

The nerve! Sasha gave him a snarl, and if she could walk she would have smacked him hard, like she had done when they were children. What right did Charles have to treat her like this? After she had been gone for so long and been through so much, the least he owed her was a little decency.

"Hold your tongue." She hissed through her teeth. "You've no reason to act that way."

Charles didn't react. He only asked again: "What do you want, Sasha?"

For once, Sasha wished she still had her trusty Electro-Bolt; that would set her unruly brother straight. He was such a hassle to be around: no respect, no remorse, nothing to show that he had missed her at all. Had he missed her? She didn't even know. Although she didn't want to admit it, she had missed him- she had missed him terribly. The big, blue sea was so quiet and lonely, and it was only worse after the fall. Well... everything was much worse after the fall.

Yes, Sasha remembered. She remembered every minute and every second of her time in Rapture, right down to the moment that Frankenstein, Doctor Tenenbaum, had scooped her up and taken her into her care. It was a terrible burden, and she envied the others, who were too damaged mentally to go without major repair. With large chunks of ADAM infested brain matter corrected, they would not remember a thing, while she had only needed a few switches here and there turned off. Still worse was waking up on the surface world, sane, clean and lucid, only still in a Splicer's wretched body. Hours of painful surgery and Tenenbaum's gene therapy couldn't save her right leg, so she would never be rid of the... thing... the monstrous talon that her right foot had become- it wasn't even that. It had been more like a hoof.

"I'm not saying anything until you apologize, or tell me why you're being so awful to your sister. What on Earth did I do to you, Charles?" She said, turning away from him. She heard Charles make a sharp, frustrated sound.

"You know what, Sasha. You know exactly what." Charles growled. "Let's start with your going off to parts unknown without so much as a goodbye."

"It's too complicated to explain." She said. "I... I fell in love. It was a mistake."

The ugly lie sat heavy on Sasha's chest. She didn't have love in Rapture: that ended when her handsome young beau had destroyed himself with ADAM and liquor, leaving her alone in a world that was collapsing around her ears. While he was cooling in his grave or burning in Hell, which she wasn't sure, she had been very much alive, starving and freezing to death in Pauper's Drop. Every part of her cried out to tell this to Charles, and rub it in his smug little face, but she couldn't.

"Oh, my mistake, _princess_. All's forgiven now that I know you did this to yourself over a man." Charles huffed.

"You close your smart mouth!" Sasha shouted. "You have no idea what I went through!"

There was a silence. For a few seconds, the siblings just stared at each other hatefully, gathering their thoughts. Sasha didn't know what was going through her brother's head, but at the moment she didn't care. She had forgotten what she had called him in for, and now she wanted him out of her sight.

"Mother always said you'd end up wrong." Charles said. His eyes were narrow. "She told Father that she was ashamed of how spoilt you'd grown up to be. After you left, she was sure that you'd end up penniless and on the streets within a year, thinking you could have made it on your own."

Sasha's face reddened, and she fought the urge to raise up on her shaky legs and actually strike Charles. She _did _handle herself. In Rapture, her shrewdness and intelligence had fueled the business she and her new husband had started on their first day in the shining junk heap. It wasn't her fault that Ryan Industries bought them out, turning their labor and personnel firm into a front for illegal Plasmid testing. While _he _was out spending their savings on the same Plasmids that had put them out of business, she had been doing her best to keep the right to their flat.

She turned her wheelchair around, and refused to speak further. Eventually, Charles snorted loudly and stomped off, slamming the door to the solarium behind him.

He had no idea how much it hurt her. As soon as he was gone, his sister was in tears.

In Rapture, she had been normal. Everyone was in the same position: trying to survive and stay sane enough to form coherent thoughts. Now, here on the surface, she was totally alone. Not one hand reached out to take hers, and some even tried to strike her back down. Despite weeks of painful surgery and therapy, she was still the same ugly Splicer she had been then, and that made her a puzzle piece trapped in the wrong box. Everyone around her was a different shape, a different color, a different type. How merciful it would be to have her mind stripped of those horrible memories.

Sasha D'Angelique was not happy on the surface. Even though she had been delivered from Hell itself, she found herself longing to return.

###

"Oh Sasha! You haven't changed a bit since you left! You know, I was just talking about you to Marsha Wells last week..."

The voice of Marigold Arnold went on and on, chattering like a cuckoo about things Sasha hadn't even thought about once in the last twenty years: dinner parties, fundraisers, grandchildren-mundane, wonderful things that she could no longer relate to. Her old friend might as well have been talking about astrophysics.

"That's nice, Mari." Sasha said quietly. Her reply thrilled the younger woman even more, and she started in on another long, breathless string of babble. Not once had she asked about where her friend had been for the past two decades.

Marigold was a good person. Sasha didn't resent her for moving on, as she had always been distracted with all of her... distractions. Bored with the life of a socialite, Marigold busied herself with organizing all of the community's activities: block parties and the Fourth of July, fun things for other idle people looking for occupation to enjoy. Sasha wondered if Marigold herself ever enjoyed these things.

"When Charles told me you had run off, all those years ago, I had been shocked, truly shocked, Sasha." Mari went on. Now that she was acknowledging her disappearance, Sasha realized she had nothing to tell her. She couldn't say that she had been in a secret underwater city for twenty years and was a drug-razed shell of her former self! The book club would simply _die_.

"I was surprised too, Mari." Sasha said. "You don't count on these things happening."

She heard Mari gasp, spraying static into the phone. "Oh, why do you do these things, Sasha? You've always been the quiet one, always standing in the corner, making those kinds of remarks. Now you vanish to some jungle nation God-knows-where for twenty years and you're still about as outgoing as a hermit crab!"

"Well, I guess the jungle didn't do much for me." Sasha replied.

After enduring a few more tense minutes avoiding her old friend's questions, Sasha made a move to end their talk. Not before, however, Mari snuck in an invitation to her candlelight dinner party.

"We'll have a great time." She said. Her voice was between innocent excitement and frighteningly gleeful curiosity. "And bring Charles. You two both need to get out of the house more."

Mari knows, Sasha thought, that when she says 'we'll have a great time,' she means, 'if you don't come, I'll let slip a rumor about how you ran off to a faraway nation with a stranger,' which, admittedly, wasn't far from the truth.

"You know I'll be there, Mari."

The phone clicked as Mari hung up the phone, and Sasha was alone again.

Sighing, she put down the handset. For a few moments, she stared at her reflection in her vanity mirror. Against the finery of her bedroom, from the dark plush curtains to the shimmering jewelry still left on the end table from the day she left, her face was that much more hideous. For all she had been through to get home, the surgeries, Tenenbaum's "cure," all that useless therapy, she still saw the same awful creature in the mirror. Her plasticine nose and sunken eyes were that of a filthy Splicer pretending to be a human being.

A hand went to the bald spot on the back of her head, then traced a long, puffy scar that went from her left ear to the corner of her mouth. She remembered the man who gave her that scar; his smirk as he pulled his knife out of the waistband of his trousers and slid it across... and the whole time, he _smiled_.

So many horrible, twisted memories floated to the surface as she stared into her own light blue eyes in the mirror. The scorched face and single burning eye of a zip gun wielding maniac, the groaning of metal as a building collapsed, the smell of rotting flesh and pure suffering in Apollo Square, and the sounds of Splicers breaking into her flat, desperate for ADAM... and that man.

That cold-eyed, stiff walking man with the clear features and the calm expression-an expression that didn't falter even as he plowed through wave after wave of her people. A one-man army in a warm cream sweater that looked like it was knitted by his mother murdered hundreds of aggressive and innocent Splicers alike. Once, she had seen him shoot a young woman in the head while she sat prone, hugging a ball of dirty blankets to her chest screaming that it was her child.

_Don't kill my baby. Please, please, don't kill my baby._

She put her head down on the counter. The pain in her deformed leg was intense, but she barely noticed it. Her whole life in Rapture was finally crashing back on top of her, the meager protection of the surface world's safety and sanity snapping like a high wire string. Down, down she fell into a black pool of fear and despair, almost feeling the drop in her stomach, as a trembling fit overtook her.

She didn't cry. As she was accustomed, she held in her tears by biting hard on her tongue; in Rapture, a crying woman is a vulnerable target too good to resist. That's how she got that scar.

Taking in a deep breath, she straightened. With purposeful hands, she took up her dusty old tubes of makeup and feverishly splattered it onto her wrinkled, cracked face. A fistful of powder made her pale as a ghost, while blush made her into a ghoulish clown. Her pace grew more panicked as she scribbled around her eyes and smeared on lipstick with trembling fingers. Finished, she stared, panting and breathless at her work. Her mental stability began to crumble as she locked eyes with the creature behind the cold wall of glass, and the only thing that caught her, stopped her, was remembering the night she had first lost sight of her mind.

It had been after a party. Her memory of it was dim and hazy, but she remembered humiliation. She remembered looking into a mirror and seeing this exact same hideous clown.

Sanity came back slowly. When Sasha realized what she had done, she could only shake her head and let out the breath she had been holding. Taking up her crutches, she hobbled into the bathroom to wash off her face. Fifteen minutes later, she returned with a towel draped over her shoulder.

She turned off the light and hauled herself into bed. Muted moonlight played across the room through the open window, casting onto the towel draped over that heinous mirror.

It would never be removed.

###

That night, Sasha had a dream.

Shadows spilled like ink over a gray, dusty garden. The ground was dry and cracked, and the trees stretched their knobby fingers to the white sun.

Sasha remembered this garden from her youth.

There was still a rusty swing set among the weeds, and even a tea table made of metal painted white (now chipping) sat between two overgrown willows. She was in England, at the house where she had been born. Built by hand by her French father and his friends from the Great War, the house should look new, but it doesn't. The paint is peeling, the roof is caving in, and every window is boarded up; it doesn't even really look like the house she remembered- now it was more like the house Charles lived in now, where she was staying, and the haunted house from the first film she had seen with her husband Sydney.

Suddenly the scenery shifted. In the hazy ether of dreaming, Sasha seemed to be staggering drunkenly through a slideshow of strange scenes: a sunlight forest, a hallway in Rapture, her room at Charles's house, and other places she had never been. Shadows, black as midnight, stalked her through the mist. They had burning red eyes and lanky limbs, and dressed in the strange clothes of surface people.

The last scene was a stage. A cool blue light filtered through tall windows; the chamber was in Rapture. Sasha didn't know where she was in the room- maybe somewhere on the floor in front of the stage, which reared up imposingly before her: its floor seemed to be miles above her.

A wicked black shape formed on the stage.

"What are you doing here?"

"How was the play? I heard about-"

"I love you, too."

Broken snips of sound blipped into the dream, fading in and out of the buzzing chaos around her. The black shape was drawing itself up, getting larger and larger. The dream became more vague and confused as the shadow swelled, and more black fog formed around Sasha and the stage.

"ALL YOUR FACES ARE MELTED!"

A horrendous roar broke through the black haze, and eight piercing lights cut through the darkness.

Blinking and gasping, Sasha woke up with a start. Sunlight was shining through the windows, warming her face, and the sounds of activity came up from the lower levels. For a few seconds, Sasha didn't know where she was. Rapture? Father's house in the country?

Then she heard Charles's voice. He was shouting, cursing someone for spilling something. Charles rarely cursed, as Father had always struck him when he did-he only spoiled his tongue when he had been drinking. Sasha didn't know how to feel when she realized she had driven her brother back to the bottle; pride, anger and remorse conflicted.

Dressing was slow and painful, as was limping down the stairs, made worse by her ill sleep. When she got to the first floor, Charles was waiting for her. His face was bitter and cross, his hair and clothes rumpled. As they stared each other down, Sasha bit her tongue not to comment on the smell of alcohol clinging to him.

"I fired Elsie." He said casually. "Asking questions. Can't have that, can we, sister?"

Elsie was a servant that had been in the service of the D'Angeliques since Sasha and Charles were children. She had read them to sleep and walked them to school, bandaged their scraped knees and mended their clothes, everything they needed while their parents were away. The older woman had a lilting accent and was thin as a sapling; the children often called her Mary Poppins.

"How could you do that?" Sasha shouted at him. "Have you gone totally mad, Charles?"

"She wanted to know where you'd been all this time." Charles said, his voice slow and calm. "Wouldn't accept the story you gave me about running off with a man to Africa and getting some jungle rotting disease."

"That's the truth." Sasha said. Her voice wavered, and her stomach dropped when she thought she saw Charles's eyes widen a bit. He mellowed, though, too sick from drink to see through the lie.

Snorting, Charles turned and stomped off like an angry child, slamming the door to the library behind him. What was his _problem_?

"Fool." Sasha spat. Gathering her crutches underneath her, she hobbled off to the other end of the house, wanting to be as far away from her idiot brother as she possibly could. She schemed through the long, tortuous walk: perhaps she could catch Elsie before she left and convince her to stay-they could talk it out-but it felt dangerous. Somehow, she was afraid she would accidentally reveal her secret to her trusted nanny.

In the breakfast nook, their other servant Clarence was making coffee. He moved slowly about the task, silently, just as Sasha remembered him. In a chair by the table, Elsie sat, staring into the whorls and grains of the antique surface for the last time.

"Elsie..." Sasha started. Her voice died away when the old woman barely moved at her name. Her eyes stayed locked in the grooves of the table.

"She doesn't want to talk." Clarence said. The normally quiet man sounded harsh. "Mr. D'Angelique made sure of that."

"Charles is being a spoiled child." Sasha said. Sitting, she placed a pockmarked hand on Elsie's, trying to shake out some sort of response; Elsie tensed, but stayed silent.

The moment stretched. Finally, after a minute, Elsie looked Sasha in the eyes.

"Something very strange is happening in this house, Miss Sasha." She said. "Your return has stirred up some old dust."

"I know." Sasha said, stuttering. Elsie had that sharp look in her eye that she had given them as children when they were telling a lie. Now there wasn't that sparkle of humor: only fear, anger and confusion.

Should she tell her? Of course not! Tenenbaum had told her little else except _do not ever tell_. As the only one who remembered Rapture, it was on _her_ and her alone to protect Rapture's secret. Why? The stern, reprimanding look on Elsie's face made her think that it all wasn't worth it, and the truth had to come out. So what if the world finds out about Rapture? How could it hurt anything? Right now, her secret was hurting everyone around her.

It was almost painful to look the woman who had raised her in the stead of her self-indulgent mother in the eyes and lie to her.

"Sir tells me that you suffered from a rotting fever in the Congo." Elsie said, crossing her arms. "I don't want to be disrespectful, Miss Sasha, but I've found it hard to palate."

The air grew tense. Sasha bit hard on her lip; either she was going to break down and tell Elsie everything or she was going to explode. Those shadowy creatures whispered: if she told, she would be thought mad. Charles would have her put in an institution. She'd spend the rest of her life being poked and examined, her hideous parts drawn out and photographed by beady eyed flour beetles with long white coats and rough, rude hands.

"Let's go somewhere else." She blurted out. "A-and... I need to talk to you."

"Fine then, Miss Sasha." Elsie said. She turned to Clarence, and with a nod of his head he left the room. Looking back to Sasha, she said, "So you're saying that what you told Sir _wasn't _true?"

A trembling went up Sasha's twisted legs. The moment was coming too fast, faster than she could handle. She wasn't ready to tell someone yet; the wounds were too fresh, the horror to near. If she told anyone about Rapture, she feared it would rear up out of the Earth and swallow her up again.

"I have some things to say." She whimpered. Without another word, Elsie nodded and stood, taking Sasha's knobby hand and giving it a squeeze. For a moment, it felt like everything would be alright.

They left the breakfast nook, and Elsie said quietly that they could go to the quiet private park at the edge of the neighborhood. No one was ever there on Monday morning, and the peace and familiarity of the green was better than the tension of the D'Angelique manor. Shouldering on their coats, the two women started to leave.

"We're leaving." Sasha called out as they passed the double doors to the library. No response. Sighing, she pushed open the left heavy oak door and saw Charles sitting in with his feet up on the antique coffee table.

He was reading his newspaper, trying to ignore them; a huge red headline was splashed across the front page: _NIGHT OF TERROR: String of Brutal Murders Shakes Chicago_.

"Oh go on." He snorted. "See if I stop you from leaving my house."

Glaring, Sasha turned and slammed the door behind her.

For her charge's benefit, Elsie drove the car the short distance down the road to the park. All the way, she cast sideways glances at Sasha, watching her steely face as she stared darkly out the passenger window. She couldn't see the turmoil beneath the placid surface, but her instincts told her that the young woman was deeply, deeply troubled.

When they arrived at the park, clouds had started to gather. By the time they crossed the little stone bridge over the drainage trench, the morning sun was invisible behind thick gray clouds. As they sat down on the same bench overlooking the duck pond Sasha and her brother played around as children, one or two drops of rain had fallen.

A single white swan glided across the quivering water, and a one-legged duck hobbled along, a reminder of how toxic the pristine water had become over the years. Otherwise, they were totally alone.

"Well, Elsie, where do you want me to start?" Sasha asked. Her insides clenched when she realized how close she was to having to confess.

"At the beginning, I suppose." Elsie sighed. "Why did you leave us, Miss Sasha?"

Staring at her feet, Sasha waited almost a minute before responding. She was so afraid, but she had to get this heavy, slimy thing off her chest.

"I _did _go after a man." She started. "But it wasn't the only reason. I was invited to go."

"Go where?"

The confession grew larger and hotter in her throat, like a burning coal. Now that she started, there was no way she could stop.

"I was following Sydney Abraham. You remember him. I followed him to a city in Iceland."

"_Iceland_? Surely you're not serious." Elsie said, incredulous. Her look of skepticism faded when she saw tears falling down Sasha's face.

"Below Iceland." Sasha said, her voice nearly a whisper.

The rest of the story came out in a rush of sob-cracked, stumbling nonsense. She sounded completely mad as she recounted her life in Rapture, only starting with the city being underwater. She spoke faster and faster, becoming less articulate, less coherent, as she spoke of the thrill of electricity running through her veins, and the sheer terror of standing in the gaze of a Big Daddy. Elsie had a look on her face between fear, worry and horror: her eyes were wide, and her mouth was just barely open. Very slowly, her hand had gone to her chin, and terror was growing on her face.

"I remember the cold the most." Sasha choked near the end of her speech. "Being cold, and not having enough meat on my bones to keep warm."

"I had extra fingers."

"I wore the same ragged clothes for years."

"Sometimes, I wouldn't eat for days and days. I-I- I ate cockroaches when I was starving."

After a long fifteen minutes, she finished her story with waking up from surgery on the surface. She had her eyes pinched shut, but she could feel Elsie's stare on her like a laser. Ashamed and afraid, she just wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

A bird called. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The rest of the world kept spinning while Sasha's lifelong friend took in what she had told her; even though her eyes were closed, she could imagine the look of horror and disbelief on Elsie's face. Imagine if the person you had known since they were a baby told you that they had been... there? To Atlantis and back through the fires of Hell, and came back- _Wrong_.

"Oh, Sasha." Elsie said. "Oh sweet little sparrow."

Sasha flinched. She hadn't been called that in years; it never got past her that she was the only brunette in the family.

"You know I don't have much longer here." Elsie went on. "Your brother fired me."

"He can't do that without my permission." Sasha snarled, glaring at the ground.

"He wants you declared incompetent." Elsie said. "I overheard him talking on the phone to Doctor Marril. I burst in on him, and he started in on this awful tirade. Said I would be out on the street by tomorrow."

"That's why I needed to ask you about your story. Charles said you had gone mad..."

Elsie's voice trailed off. She clenched her hands, and looked at Sasha as if she could answer all of her questions. Sasha looked back, confused; after how real it had been for her, how tangible Rapture was in her very skin, she couldn't understand that Elsie didn't even begin to believe her.

"Let's go back." Elsie said, taking Sasha's hand. Wordlessly, they left the beaten playground by the duck pond as they found it, and they would never return.

###

Charles was waiting for them when they returned. He was leaning in the doorway as they pulled up in the car, and although it was strange, it was apparent that he was sober as a saint. Those cold blue eyes were focused, and his stance was solid. While Sasha scrambled to get herself and her crutches out of the car, Elsie was already halfway to Charles with a grim look on her wrinkled face.

"Told you." Charles hissed through his teeth. Elsie looked ready to smack him.

"We need to talk." She told him. Still standing out on the driveway, Sasha felt like they didn't see her.

"Too late." Charles smirked. "I want you out of here. You've overstayed your welcome."

"Your parents' final wishes were for me to take care of you and your sister, Charles." Elsie snapped. "I have a say in what happens."

Huffing, Charles turned and went back into the house. Elsie followed him, berating him on his immaturity and the gravity of their situation while Sasha could only stand there and be in pain. What they were saying confused her: Elsie would yell about Sasha's best interest while Charles would balk that she was insane and that he had said she was insane from the beginning. The two of them didn't seem to notice Sasha at all, or that she was close to tears.

They _both _thought she was mad.

"We'll settle this inside." Elsie said coldly. Charles nodded slowly, and disappeared into the house.

Elsie stamped her foot in frustration, slamming an open palm on the plaster wall of the facade. Still she didn't even turn to Sasha.

"It's going to rain." She said out loud. After a moment, she went inside the house herself.

Sasha followed, hobbling awkwardly over the steps and struggling with the latch. Inside, she could hear Charles and Elsie screaming at each other in the next room, their words garbled by the echo of the cold, unapolstered marble walls. But she knew what they were discussing: she could pick out the words _hospital_, _doctors_, _madwoman_, and _insane_. Charles's voice would crack, and Sasha could hear him sobbing between his words. Elsie quieted, comforting him, and then he would lash out again. This went on and on until Sasha could no longer bear it.

Slowly, she managed to get herself up the stairs. She went to her room, but she could still hear the argument through the thin floor. Sitting on her bed, she could do nothing but put her hands over her ears and wish for the noise to stop. She realized in a series of increasingly terrible revelations that she was no longer in control of her own fate. Elsie and Charles were possessed by the most wicked of demons: concern, and the belief that they knew what was best for someone else.

Once again, she refused to cry. If they heard her crying, they would only shake their heads and worry some more.

Eventually, everything went quiet. That could only mean one of two things:

One, Elsie had left, probably threatened.

Or two, the two of them had come to an agreement.

As much as she loved Elsie, she hoped for the latter. She prayed and _cried out _for the second. As there was only one compromise they could possibly come to:

Charles wanted her out of the house, and Elsie wanted her to get help.

She was headed straight for the asylum.


	3. Lester Gets a New Neighbor

Lester didn't expect Hell to be cold.

Surely, he had to be in Hell: he was dead now, swallowed up by darkness, unable to feel anything at all. He was dead and in Hell; there had been no place in Heaven for a creature like him, with his unholy shape so far removed from the Lord's design. Still, the cold was very troubling. Perhaps they couldn't find a place for him yet- his flight to Hell was full, so he would have to spend the night at the terminal. With dry, aching lungs, he laughed at his own joke; he never knew he would be so much funnier after he died.

A stinging started somewhere. The cold was starting to frostbite him, which was strange. If he was dead, how did he have toes to feel being numb? How could he have fingers curling up for warmth? And how could he be feeling this intense horrific pain in his shoulder getting worse and worse and worse by the second-

With a sharp intake of breath, Lester's eyes flickered open as he came fully awake. Nerves fired like a gattling gun as his brain panicked, struggling to locate all of his limbs, while his conscious mind reeled at being faced with a strange white void that filled his vision. It took several minutes for him to calm down, and he acknowledged that the void was the cloudy sky, while his limbs were still safely attached to his body. He was lying on his back outside, and the winter cold was digging into his flesh. Where he was, or why, or how long he had been unconscious were still total mysteries.

Slowly, he tried to turn his head, and was punished with a sharp pain in his left shoulder. He could turn it the other way, but all he could see was a brick wall. Why on Earth was he outside? How did this happen?

Lifting himself up on his right shoulder, Lester peered around him. He was in an alleyway, sheltered from the wind by a dumpster and in the shadow of some low-lying old factory buildings. Coarse red brick scratched his back through his undershirt, and his whole body ached, the pain radiating out from his injured shoulder and seeping into all his bones and swollen joints. Nothing looked familiar, and he had no idea how he got so far from home.

He didn't even have a blur: there was nothing but a dark void in his memory between the now and when he collapsed...

He collapsed. The memory of the night before (or whenever, he couldn't remember) came rushing back like a tidal wave, sending a shutter through his body. He remembered a horrible feeling of sickness, pain and suffering, rolling around on the floor in agony-but why? The memory dissolved into a buzzing mess, as if reality itself had flickered out of existence. Chaos ruled after that, and then... just silence. Darkness.

Blood.

Reeling backward, gasping, Lester saw a huge red blotch in the corner of his vision. Forcing himself to look down through the pain in his shoulder, he saw that his tank top was soaked through to his skin with fresh, crimson blood. An acrid stench stung his tongue, iron sticking to the walls of his throat and making him cough. More frightening was the fact that the blood was still warm.

Frantically, Lester sat up and stripped off his shirt, examining his chest. Quivering hands felt of his smooth, slimy skin, checking just barely, as he was afraid of running his hand into a gaping wound and touching an exposed organ or some other gory horror. At first, he was relieved to find that he was still intact and not losing his stuffing.

Then he realized that meant the blood wasn't his.

'

Retching, Lester tried to pull his head back from the sight. This only earned him a wicked bolt of agony from his broken shoulder that sickened him further; the taste of blood came up into his mouth, but at least _that_ has to be his own.

Holding his breath, praying as hard as he could, Lester inspected his hands. Each finger was tipped down to the knuckle with blood, like a quill pen in ink. His palms were stained with the reeking, scarlet stuff; literally, he was caught red-handed. The insides of his arms were streaked with blood. It seemed to soak him through, right down to his dirty soul.

What had happened?

That question seemed stupid. A better one was, "what have I done?"

A whimper escaped him as he fought to push himself up onto his feet, and the pain didn't stop when he took the weight off his injured side. The swells of agony went all up and down, from his left shoulder all the way down to his hip. Balance was difficult, and his body seemed to fight him when he tried to move his legs apart or his shoulders back; it was almost like his bones were tied down. That was the least of his troubles, of course. He was a murderer.

The full thought didn't really process. A concept was all it was, a fact that he knew, but didn't understand. The fact that he was a murderer didn't make sense; he was a good person! Good people don't go around killing other people and getting blood smeared all over them! Lester O'Hara was an honest, hard working member of society who had never even gotten a traffic ticket, not someone who was unstable or wicked, and certainly not someone who even thought of hurting other people.

But he had thought of it. His mind went back to the day before, or whenever it was. Back to when Marrdock had taunted him and that little voice had said those strange things...

Something inside him snapped, as if a door had been slammed. The memory vanished in a puff of smoke.

Blinking, Lester was left staring at an empty hole in his memory.

He shook it off, and rubbed his aching head with a bloody hand. Right now, he felt driven to get home. Tired, injured and afraid, instinct drove him to seek shelter.

A staggering step. Another. Slowly he adjusted to the change in his balance and found a comfortable gait, shuffling along slowly out into the labyrinth of alleyways between the old worker barracks. Warmth from the houses kept him from freezing, and even allowed him to dispose of his blood-soaked t-shirt in a nearby Dumpster. The thought of someone discovering the shirt didn't even cross his mind; it wasn't important _right at that moment_, so he could only ignore it. No higher thought could pierce through the heady fog wrapping his brain and the hideous pain bursting from his shoulder.

A door opened. Lester's ears picked up, turning toward the sound; both fear and relief conflicted in his exhausted mind as he tried to decide if he should stay still and yell for help or run for his life. A young man with a little blood on him wouldn't scare anyone... he didn't do anything! All of this was so silly, it was almost funny. Lester O'Hara was as pure as the driven snow and couldn't hurt anyone.

Somewhere up ahead of him, a door opened-he couldn't see it with his clouded vision and one cataract-infested eye, but he could hear the sound of frost-rusted hinges. The vague shape of a person stepped out into the alleyway, hefting two large bags and dumping them into another Dumpster.

"Please!" Lester shouted, his voice raspy and far-off as an old HAM radio message. "I need help!"

The person turned, but Lester couldn't see their face. He couldn't see their reaction, or read what they were going to do next.

"I'm hurt!" Lester called, his voice growing weak. "Please!"

A person started to become apparent from the clouded shape, a young woman with long hair and soft eyes, someone who would pity a crippled man suffering in an alley.

Instead, horror and disgust curled the girl's pretty face. She staggered back, gasping, as Lester lurched toward her; fear made her lovely face a terrifying mask.

_Your face! Like a mask!_

Lester jumped back as the girl let loose a harsh scream, tearing back into her house like a bat out of Hell. The door slammed, and Lester could still hear her yelling inside. Confused, afraid and unable to process _why _the girl had fled from him, he couldn't figure out how to react. Should he run? Should he stay? Should he be afraid?

A man poked his head out of the door, a boy about the girl's age. While Lester just stood there, dumb, the young man pulled out a weapon.

"You get out of here, freak!" He shouted. "We don't want you here!"

Why was this boy yelling? Lester cocked his head, puzzled, and then he saw the gun. The cold glint of the six-shot revolver sent a wave of terror through him, and finally his feet decided to move. Against the pain in his shoulder, Lester bolted like a frightened deer, ripping away at superhuman speed.

"And don't come back, ya freak!"

###

Lester didn't remember what happened between then and when he collapsed in his apartment. The trip faded in and out, and whenever he tried to concentrate on remembering, that strange impenetrable wall would slam down in front of him and seal him out of his own mind. He strained to think, but he couldn't. It was almost painful.

The only thing he knew was that he had just landed on his side on the cold floor of his filthy little rat's nest after crawling through a window. He didn't even know how he got up to the sill, which was almost forty feet off the ground.

Breath heaved in and out. His shoulder throbbed. His heart beat painfully in his ears. Basic functions of life were Herculean tasks for the beaten young man, and he wouldn't move for three hours. Three hours of aching, whimpering and silent crying.

_Sometimes, I wish that things could go back to the way they were._

Strange voices drifted in and out while he lied there, but he wasn't able to process them. Sleepy, he allowed it.

_You know, Lester... I don't want you to be afraid, but you're really in for it. The Family loves you-don't forget that, but the danger is real._

_ I guess you don't really have any say in it, anyway. You're on my terms, now. My body, too. Kinda funny how these things happen, isn't it?_

_ Doc Lamb would say that you should embrace your inner self. I never knew what that meant until now. Doc Lamb's always right, y'know. She's our mother. Our mother and leader. _ _Oh... and you wouldn't remember Eleanor. She was beautiful. She's going to save us all._

As the sun came through the windows, Lester finally started to wake up. The voice crawled back into the dark shadows of his mind, and he was alone inside his head. What he didn't realize was that he wasn't alone in his apartment.

###

Jackie Turner was concerned. That morning, while Lester was being menaced by the man with the gun, she had been enjoying a morning coffee with the Sunday newspaper. All of that pleasantness had ended when she saw the headline: _NIGHT OF TERROR: Sting of Murders Shakes Chicago_.

She read on, nervous. These killings, three killings, had taken place in a poor neighborhood very close to her flat. Three people, two women and a man, had been murdered- no, _eviscerated_-over a course of five hours the night before. She felt nauseous, and had to close the paper then.

A few moments later, she realized she knew someone in that neighborhood: that Lester O'Hara, the strange young man who was always in the library in the afternoon during the week and in the morning during the weekend. He fancied her, she knew, and he always made her uncomfortable, but he was sweet to her and never said more than two words at a time. Maybe she had been too quick to judge him: his horribly scarred face was frightening, and his raspy voice was like something out of a horror movie, but that didn't make him a bad person. She certainly didn't want to see him murdered!

She had his library card, which had his address on it. Right after reading that headline, she told her boss that she had an emergency and would be back in minute. Jackie got in her car and drove down Arkham street to the decrepit, shadowy apartment building on the corner of Arkham and Whippoorwill. Shivering, Jackie walked up the path to the front door, fingering her father's Swiss army knife in her coat pocket as she walked past a man slumped against the cold brick wall.

The doorman glared dangerously at her as she entered, but she tried to ignore it. Giving him her sunniest smile, she asked to see Lester O'Hara.

"The freak?" He asked. Lifting an eyebrow, Jackie just barely nodded.

Smiling with tobacco-stained teeth, the doorman gave her a key to the stairs.

"Room 45, gorgeous. You be careful-the freak's got... 'quirks.' He's a real nut job, with all that twitchin' and that freaky eye that's always halfway hangin' out of his head."

"I'll remember that."

No, Jackie didn't suspect Lester. It hadn't even crossed her mind that he could be the killer. He had never done anything to make her think he was remotely capable of such a crime, and he treated her better than any man in the city. Maybe he just needed a good woman to help him settle back into society after whatever horrific event had made his face like that. Not that she was that woman. He scared her.

When she arrived at door 45, there was a strange silence. Not even the sounds of a TV or radio came from the other side, even though it was past noon. The fact that Lester didn't arrive at the library was troubling enough, but this was just disturbing.

"Lester?" She called.

Inside, Lester was still on the floor. He twitched, the sound of Jackie's voice piercing the ether clogging his mind. At first he was incapable of understanding who it was or where the sound was coming from.

"Lester?"

The second call got him to wake up a little more. Now he realized that he might be in peril, so he replied with a weak moan.

On the other side, Jackie gasped. Lester was hurt! What if the killer had struck his apartment? She started jerking the door, expecting it to be locked, but it came open easily and slammed into the far wall, bouncing back and shutting behind her.

"Lester? Lester! Are you alright? What happened?"

Panicking, she kneeled next to her friend, who was still lying broken on the floor. A hand went on his side, and she let out a sigh of relief when she found he was breathing. Her touch made him curl up like a pill bug; she took that as a good sign.

Lester didn't know who it was, but having someone nearby that wasn't acting strange or waving a gun at him. Relaxing his tense muscles, he tried to roll over and face his savior.

"Oh... oh God."

That was never a good sign.

"What is it?" He asked drunkenly, "_what is it_?"

Jackie scooted backward. Horror of horrors, what had happened to his _face_? What made him-

"Oh, Lester," She whimpered. "What happened to you?"

_JACKIE?_

Immediately, Lester snapped awake and lifted his head enough to look this person in the eye. Jackie Turner was sitting in front of him, looking afraid. Why was she here? How did she know to come here? At that moment, he thought this beautiful entity here to save him had to be an angel sent from Heaven.

"Jackie," he coughed; a skeletal hand reached out to touch her, but she pulled away like he had the plague. She was afraid of him, too!

"Don't go away, Jackie. Please. I'm not gonna..."

He broke into a vicious coughing fit, and blood sprayed from his mouth onto the dirty floor. Jackie flinched, moving away from him. That made it twenty times worse. His one good eye fixed on her, scanning her frightened face and trying to divine some sort of truth out of her. Why was she so afraid? Had he done something to her? What could he have done... it would have been in the last minute or two, because why would she come to rescue someone she hated?

"What's wrong?" He asked dreamily, lolling his head to one side. Jackie looked about to be sick.

"I... oh, Lester," she stammered, looking away. "Don't ask that. Just don't."

"_What_?" He asked. His voice was starting to fail him, and he went into another vicious coughing fit. It lasted and lasted, until all the air was ripped out of his lungs; if it had gone on another second, Lester was sure he would have died.

Paling, Jackie stood and started toward the door. Fear came off her in waves, and it made Lester furious-why? Why was this happening?

"Your face, Lester. Something happened to your face. And your hands. And... everything. I have to go."

She turned, and started to flee. Involuntarily, Lester reached out and grabbed her ankle, a horrible hiss rattling out of his wretched throat-she screamed. She screamed a harsh scream that made something inside good, sweet, lovable Lester snap.

Bellowing a high-pitched screech, Lester's body heaved up and he swatted his bony hand at her, snagging her blouse and ripping away one of her sleeves. She screamed again, grating his eardrums and fueling his unnatural rage; rage that burned in him as if it came from another plane.

It did.

_Do it do it do it do it! Kill her! She's a liar and a deceiver and a filthy gene slave! Look at her fear! She's a slave to herself and ancient stupidness! _

At the sound of the voice, Lester let her go. His own fear of himself saved the life of the only person he loved.

At that moment, Jackie Turner disappeared out of Lester's life. Her arms shaking, but no longer screaming, Jackie fled down the stairs and vanished; poof. Like magic, light was gone from his world.

He had to see. He had to know.

Lifting his heavy body, Lester dragged himself back into his apartment and closed the door. Stumbling, shuffling along, he staggered into the bathroom and flicked the switch, numb and not knowing what he would see.

Was he surprised when he saw the creature staring back at him from the mirror? No. Part of him already knew the beast. Lester wasn't stupid, either-he could work out what happened-not how, but what. Some people would be surprised if they discovered one morning that they had become something so unnatural and hideous it was sickening to even see; for Lester, it was almost a part of life.

One eye. No nose, only a hole. One ear. Huge, sharp teeth that curved like daggers and hung far out of his mouth. Thick muscles bulging out from under his clothes, straining them to the breaking point. A curved spine, like a gargoyle's.

Fingers were claws. Toes were curving and dexterous, tipped with lethal talons. Looking back at him in the mirror was a creature that was half-man, half-beast. What beast it was wasn't even apparent: it was somewhere between man, ape, wolf, snake, bird and a pinch of something from another world.

_A Spider Splicer. That's what you are. Doc Lamb... she made me strong. She took me off the streets and gave me a purpose, a part in the Family. She made me one'a her avenging angels._

Phineas. The door blocking off his memory of the day before lifted, the trauma all hitting Lester at once.

_I didn't want you... frying out on me, so I blocked you from remembering that I'm in here. _Phineas said. There was a lightness in his voice, a humor.

_But now the cat's outta the bag, I guess. I owe you an explanation._

"I already know who you are," Lester said, his voice flat. Inside, he was fighting to keep his wits from snapping.

_That's good. Then you know why I'm so miffed. _

"No."

_Then_ _let me tell you something, mack. _Phineas said. _And this is all you need to know about me. I'm you, and you're me-well, I guess only the second part is true. You're me. You're a product of MY brain. Right now, your nerve center is a tumor somewhere in my frontal lobe. We share that tissue, you and me. I can hear your thoughts, but you can't hear mine, and I can control all the ADAM cells in your body. That's most of them, by the way. _

_ You probably don't understand any of this, you not being a Harvard graduate like me, so I'll make it simple: you are a tenant in MY_ _body. I'm not a voice in your head-you're a voice in MINE. _

Lester swallowed. Only now did he realized that the horrible creature in the mirror had been mouthing the words his other self had been saying in his head.

"I don't understand," Lester whispered. "All of it was real? Rapture? You?"

_Well... that's where it gets a little complicated for your stupid little head. YOU invented a lot of that from MY memories. You only remember the _good _parts of Rapture, none of the bad. No, that's MY cross to bear. _

_ Excuse me. Doc Lamb would be ashamed to hear me talkin' like that. _

"Why are you killing people?"

_Because Doc Lamb said so._

And that was it. Phineas's presence vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Lester was left alone, in his dirty little apartment, unable to process what he had just learned. Those last words echoed over and over in his mind, pounding against the sides of his skull like a hammer.

Phineas was insane and dangerous, and he lived inside Lester's head. All of it was true. Everything in Lester's world was some sort of carefully crafted lie, layered with brainwashing and a linen-light masquerade. He couldn't remember anything because he didn't have anything _to_ remember.

_Ready to give up?_

Phineas returned. Lester knew he had been listening.

_You know... you could end this right now. Just give up. Let's join back together, be one again. That's in _Metamorphosis and Transformation_, you know. "In the end, we shall all join hands and become one with the Holy Daughter." _

_ You do wanna get saved, don't you, Lesty?_

Lester ignored him. Now, he was backing out of the bathroom and into the main room. His eye fixed on the window, and he went up to it. Steady hands undid the latch and opened it wide; cold air brushed his monstrous face, and brought a few salty tears to his single eye.

A siren blared. It was very close by; a moment later, Lester saw a sleek police cruiser pulling up to the front of the building. Jackie must have called the police; clever girl might have even figured out that he was the killer, if she knew about the slayings yet. In less than a minute, there would be a tidal wave of armed men beating down his door.

"Well, Phineas, you win. I give up."

Without another thought, nor a moment of reconsideration, nor a feeling, warm or cold, Lester O'Hara closed his one golden eye, held his breath, and gave up.

He jumped.


	4. Things Used to Be Simple

_Dear Charles,_

_ I hope you're happy. You've pushed me out of my own home, locked me away in this wretched place, and right now I'd bet you're sitting next the the hearth, drowning yourself in liquor, trying to forget about your sister rotting away in an institution._

_ I want to see you suffer, Charles. I don't care if you never write back to any of my letters. Every day that goes by that you ignore me, I know you're in pain and I LOVE IT. You deserve EVERYTHING you get for this. I hope you die alone and miserable in the pile of FILTH you've made for yoursel-_

The pen sprayed a cloud of ink onto the page as the tip snapped off. The letter slowly disappeared as the black fluid snaked in shadowy tendrils up the white paper, eating it up.

With a cry of frustration, Sasha crumpled the paper and tossed it into the trash, toppling the huge pile of balled-up papers already precariously stacked there. Hours of work and tears scattered onto the floor, one or two catching in the rusty air vent and rustling noisily. Ink continued to pump out of the broken pen like blood across her desk and onto the floor.

Stiffly, Sasha rose and grabbed a towel from the washbasin. Her knee protested with snaps and cracks as she keeled, scrubbing the foul-smelling stuff off the floor, her desk and her hands. The blackened towel went into the laundry chute; let the pillboxes do their jobs and deal with it, for once.

Her sleeping roommate rolled over, mumbling something about Oscar Wilde. Jill snored all night and talked all day, and her delicate psyche was like a soap bubble in it's tension and sensitivity: if one didn't stay at sharp attention and act happy and excited to hear her rambling, she dissolved into a weeping wreck. Sasha didn't think Jill was truly insane; the poor woman seemed desperate for something, maybe attention, and few people seemed to want to put up with her. Jill was Sasha's friend here.

Life behind the white walls wasn't terrible-boring, but not terrible. Days bled into each other, weeks into months. The Bright River Hospital was like the island of the Lotus Eaters, in a way. Time was idled away with little tasks, chores and activities; dull-eyed patients shuffled along in their routines like zombies, and that frightened Sasha more than anything. Soon, she'd be like that, too.

Charles wasn't going to take her back, even if the state released her. Sasha had nowhere to go: she wouldn't burden Elsie, and they had no other family that survived in the country. Right now, she stood to remain in the hospital, twiddling away her days weaving baskets and writing angry letters that would never be sent for the rest of her life.

She should be sleeping. Any minute now, pillboxes would be coming around for midnight inspection, and being up was an excuse for them to recommend extra medication.

Lying down, Sasha tried to forget. Maybe tomorrow will be better, she thought. Maybe something will change, and things will improve. It wasn't like she was in Rapture anymore.

Sleep didn't come. For hours, Sasha lied there, staring at the ceiling, pressing her pillow around her ears to block out Jill's sleep talking. At three, a violent confrontation exploded somewhere down the hall, as they did almost every night, shaking Sasha further. Any longer in this place, and she'd be the one snapping and popping a pillbox in the face.

###

Breakfast was tense and uncomfortable, as always.

Pillboxes glared over the shoulders of the patients, their chilly eyes carefully watching their hands and faces for any sign of aggression. They'd already tackled and pinned one woman to the ground that morning, and it wasn't doing anything for their moods. Sasha kept her head down and her lips tight.

"So I guess the problem is with my mother," Jill said. She had been talking nonstop since they had woken up, and since then she had gone over how her father had never been around, how stressed for money the mental health system was, and the pros and cons of herbal medicine. Sasha was on the end of her wits hearing about it.

"That's nice, Jill," she said, her voice cracking. The spoon in her hand was starting to bend.

"I never would have thought that'd be the reason why I'm here until Doctor Roy brought it up in therapy yesterday," Jill went on. "But I just can't help but feel like there's something else buried under the surface..."

"That's _nice_, Jill."

It wasn't until it hurt did Sasha realized she was clenching her teeth. She let it go when a pillbox gave her a dirty look; listening to Jill was better than going to isolation.

Group time. Rec time. Lunch. The day slipped through Sasha's fingers like so many grains of sand. It seemed like every time she blinked, an hour had gone by. Now it was four, and time to talk to Doctor Andrews.

Sasha _hated _Andrews. He was a snake in a fine designer suit, with peeling, sagging skin that he constantly scratched at, like he was shedding. His smooth voice and wheezing laugh were loathsome. He was one of those people that made you wonder why they went into a profession centered around helping people, like a teacher that hates children, or a doctor that can't stand the sight of blood.

Doctor Andrews probably tried to care. Maybe he had just been through too many hard cases. Maybe he had gone mad himself.

Two pillboxes escorted her to Andrews' office, guarding her on both sides, as if an old woman on crutches could pose a threat to two strong young men. Andrews looked at her evenly as she walked through the door to his office, putting down his newspaper.

_GRISLY MURDERS CONTINUE: Five More Victims In Ritualistic Slayings_

"Good afternoon, Ms. D'Angelique," Andrews said. "How are you?"

Sasha sat, crossing her arms and shooting Andrews a poisonous look. She wasn't going to tell him anything today. It's not like she owed it to him; she wasn't insane, and anything she told him would be the absolute truth. She hadn't said a word about Rapture to Andrews, and she got a little bit of satisfaction from his frustration.

"I'm fine, Doctor," Sasha sneered. "How are you?"

Her tone displeased him. "Let's not be sarcastic, Sasha. We're not getting anywhere when you have that attitude."

"I don't know what on Earth you're talking about, Doctor," Sasha said.

"Until you admit that you have a problem, we can't work on a solution for you," Andrews said, leaning forward. Sasha snorted.

For thirty minutes, Andrews tried unsuccessfully to pry information out of Sasha. He asked about her dreams, what she thought about at night, and each question was denied with an acid-tongued answer. Sasha started to smile as Andrews grew more flustered; their therapy sessions _were _fun, in some ways. The snake's ugly face would get red, and he'd start to spit while he spoke. He was the only entertainment Sasha had most days.

"Why don't you tell me about Rapture, Sasha?"

Her smile disappeared. Sasha glared at him, but he didn't seem fazed. This was the exact reaction he wanted.

"Rapture isn't real," she said.

"That's not what you told your brother," Andrews smirked. "Rapture might not be real, but the trauma you experienced is real."

The doctor stood and crossed the room. His red, stubbled face got closer to Sasha than she liked, not that she liked even being in the same room as him.

"You have incurred some sort of spectacular suffering," he said in a confident, scientific kind of way, as if he were giving a lecture to a class, "and you have invented this 'Rapture' to escape that suffering. You are unable to cope with the knowledge of what you have experienced."

"Oh do go on, _Doctor_," Sasha snarled at him.

"Rapture is your sanctuary," he said, examining her with his beady gray eyes.

"Rapture is _not _a sanctuary, except for the dead."

Sasha immediately swallowed her words. She had just fed him enough to keep her here for years! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Now he was going to say she just had a "breakthrough," and that she needed "special supervision" because she was "delicate." Eight stupid little words had just sentenced her to a lifetime of daily visits with this horrendous man.

"So what does Rapture represent?" He pressed, his face bright with excitement. Sasha clamped down, refusing to say anymore. Huge effort went into keeping her face cold and stoic. He asked several more times, but she would not cave in.

"Tell me about Rapture, Sasha. Why do you associate it with death?"

_Stop talking. Stop talking you moron. _

Under her chair, Sasha was tightening her fists. Memories of Rapture were starting to bubble to the surface, and Andrews' probing was prodding the membrane. Any minute, the tension would shatter, and the toxic sludge would rush forth in a flood.

"We're not leaving until we get some sort of sign, Sasha," Andrews said, furrowing his brows. Her silence was beginning to unnerve him, and she could see that his eyes were going between her and the panic button on his desk.

"Let me out of here," Sasha said darkly. "You have no idea what you're playing with, you fat, useless oaf."

The smallest smile crossed Andrews' face, and he played his fingers onto the red button. Sasha didn't have time to take another breath before a deafening alarm ripped through the placid air of the quiet mountain hospital.

Five huge, burly pillboxes exploded through the double doors like a living battering ram. A wall of white blocked out Sasha's vision as the men piled onto her, nearly breaking her arm and slamming her weak hip hard onto the floor. Within seconds she was bound tightly and totally immobile.

A needle went into her arm. A shuttering wave of numbness spread through her whole body, and unconsciousness came within seconds. A black curtain crashed down.

###

Solitary, officially, is illegal. And with good reason: any genuinely insane person could hurt themselves in any number of ways when left alone in a room.

Bright River was understaffed and overcrowded, and any patient that could be put away for a few hours was a few hours with one less crazy person to deal with.

Very slowly, Sasha began to bleed back into consciousness. The black veil started to lift, and thoughts trickled down like sliver drips of mercury. Her eyes flickered open, and she tried to take a breath, but it was stifled by the grip of a straitjacket.

She was surrounded by thick padded walls that, unlike the pristine white halls of the rest of the hospital, were sickly sulfur yellow. Unthinkable reddish-brown stains splashed over every surface, from the concrete-shelled toilet to the heavy steel door. To her revulsion, the tight straitjacket squeezing her arms to her sides was also stained, with all colors of a madman's world: yellow, red, brown and black. The sight made her want to vomit.

At that moment, Sasha realized there was nothing she could do. She was bound and alone, with no way to reach out or communicate. She could only sit there and wait for her captors to decide she had learned her lesson. After a few moments, she was sure that the waiting was making her more insane by the minute.

What had she done? Why did she deserve this? Everything seemed hopeless at that moment. Should she just give up, and resign to her fate, live out the rest of her life at the hospital, eating porridge, talking to Andrews, and listening to Jill just gabber gabber gabber until the day she died? She was too stubborn for that. They'd lock her up in the secure ward with all the _really _hard cases within a year if she had to live with that.

She wasn't insane. She _couldn't _be insane. All the things she remembered happened, didn't they? She had the scars to prove that Rapture was real, and the images she had were so clear and vivid they couldn't be illusions. Every moment, every _breath _was bright and distinct in her mind, like an individual portrait. Blood. Water. Splicers. Big Daddies. Sofia Lamb. Every second was like a lifetime. And where else could she have been? There were no remnants, no flashes or shreds of some other, more mundane reality.

Perhaps it was just that terrible.

Any number of hours later, a pillbox leaned in and gave her the stink eye. She glared at him, but didn't say anything. Wordlessly, he walked into the room and forced her onto her feet, locking several straps onto the back of the straitjacket. Like a horse on a lead, the pillbox pulled Sasha out of the room and paraded her down the hallway. Wide, glassy eyes followed them, and Sasha's face started to turn red.

"How's the box?"

It was the first time a pillbox had spoken to her, and boy, did it hurt. Sasha bit down hard on her lip.

"Oh yeah. You're the quiet one, aren't you?"

The pressure was building. A hot stone sat in her stomach.

"_Can _you talk?"

A fist balled up behind her back. In another second, she was going to twist around and body slam the arrogant young man into a wall. She didn't care what happened to her; all she wanted was to knock some respect into the insolent boy. Fortunately, before her temper snapped, the straps loosened and the jacket came off. A rough hand pushed her through a door, and she was back in her dorm room.

The sudden quiet and peace was jarring. She was alone; Jill must have found someone in the rec room to listen to her drivel.

With a long, deep breath, Sasha sat down on her bed and put her head in her hands. Her fingers caressed the long, puffy scars running down her face, and she remembered the story of every single one. The one that went from her eyelid to her temple had come from the birdlike talon of a Spider Splicer, who had fought with her over a bread crust. The one that went across the bridge of her nose had been from the handle of a gun, bashed into her face by her own husband.

Rapture _was _real. She knew that, and no one else did, but she couldn't tell a soul. She was trapped. Whatever path she took, there was a different but equally terrible monster ready to swallow her.

She couldn't take it. It was hopeless.

Later, as the sun was beginning to filter orange and red through her barred window, she found the strength to stand. Unthinking, cold and stiff, Sasha brushed her teeth and washed her face, taking refuge in the slow, even pace of mindless work. Mechanically she left the room at the dinner bell, hungry and looking for some sort of distraction.

The cafeteria was crowded, but silent, as it always was. A pillbox walked her to her seat and presented her with a meal, and she noticed he was actively trying to avoid eye contact with her.

Jill gave her a cheerful, robotic smile as she settled in. "Where were you, Sasha? I missed you. Doctor Roy said that I need a support system."

Sasha didn't respond. She only stared daggers into her soup.

"Sasha? Are you angry at me? Oh, what did I do now?" Jill pressed. Still, Sasha stayed quiet, and that upset the little woman very much.

"Maybe you're just too good for me now. You think I'm _crazy_, don't you?"

"No, I don't think you're crazy, Jill," Sasha said. "I'd just appreciate it if you shut up your big fat mouth for once in your life."

Tears formed in Jill's eyes. Sasha felt bad, and tried to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but that only started chaos.

Jill gave a feral scream, pushing Sasha away, which caused a domino effect all down the line. More screams filled the air, and pillboxes started taking down anyone that moved. Once again, Sasha was seized in a iron grip, then two, then three. Her shoulders and each arm were instantly restrained.

This time, she wasn't going to go down without a fight.

One foot went into a pillbox's shin, making him cry out in pain. The others fought to regain leverage, but that allowed Sasha's left arm to get free. She threw all her body weight into a punch to another's eye. But soon, another only took his place, and her valiant effort was beaten by brute muscle.

The grabbing hands. The screams. The smell of blood in the air. Something stirred inside Sasha that had been dormant for three years. An acrid scent seared her nostrils, and a fierce, wild buzzing filled her whole body with boundless energy.

All the pillboxes holding her, without warning, collapsed. They didn't move. They weren't breathing.

"Oh my God!" Someone shouted. Within a second, another ten pillboxes were piled on top of her, and the world was comfortably dark.

###

Well, at least they _had _to believe her, now.

A few hours later, Sasha was back in solitary, but her accommodations were much more suited to keeping her from moving at all. Huge straps and metal chains kept her bound to one corner of the room, and under a regular straitjacket she had on an indestructible swaddle of thick cloth. Breathing was almost impossible.

She didn't know that she had killed three men. She had no idea what had happened. All she knew was that she was in solitary again.

This time, she didn't waste energy on introspection. She only focused on breathing and not contemplating what was going to happen next. These things kept her alive and sane during the seven hours she spent tied to that wall in that filthy room in that horrible hospital. The only exception she made was to wonder if Jill would ever forgive her for being to awful to her.

Hours and hours went by. Sasha's limbs started going numb, but she didn't notice. Eventually, her whole body seemed to go numb, and she became detached from reality. She drifted in and out of dark, twisting dreams, and each time she woke her body was more exhausted. Reality and dreaming began to run together.

So totally disconnected she was, Sasha failed to notice strange sounds in her cell. Thuds, skittering, the sounds of crawling up in the vents. She didn't hear the screws of the air vent coming undone, or the grill crashing onto the floor. It wasn't until she felt a hot, foul-smelling gust of air hit her in the face.

"Good morning, sunshine!"

Gasping, Sasha came awake. Horror of horrors, what was in front of her?

Two brown, stained marbles stared at her, lolling in their sockets like a doll's. Wrinkled, warped flesh wrapped around bony features, clay-like. Crooked teeth, corrupt breath, and a hunched, animalistic stance made her assailant more like a huge wolf than a man.

A hand went over her mouth, keeping her from screaming. A wicked smile spread over the man's face as he quickly sliced through the straps holding her to the wall and unlocked the buckles on the back of the jacket. Gently, he helped her up.

"Now you gotta promise you won't scream, okee-dokee?" He asked. Sasha, panicked, nodded slowly.

The man's eyes were cheerful as he nodded back vigorously. "Alrighty, pretty lady. Now I'm gonna let you go, and we're gonna get out of here."

He took his hand off her mouth and let go of her arm. For a few seconds, Sasha contemplated screaming anyway; who knows what this strange man was planning. Then she realized how completely silly this was: there was no way this man was real! She was hallucinating, dreaming. This was some sort of awful flashback to Rapture, or whatever really happened to her.

A wide, manic smile cut the man's face ear to ear. "You good? Then I'm good. Let's go now!"

Giggling wildly, the man led her to the place in the ceiling where he had entered. With inhuman strength and grace, he jumped up and vanished into the darkness.

"C'mon, I'll help you up. We gotta go!"

Sasha swallowed dryly. "I can't," she said dreamily. "My leg doesn't work."

"Then I'll help you all the way! Now now now, pretty lady! They'll be coming along any second!"

Numbly, Sasha allowed the strange man to pull her up into the vent. She couldn't process what was happening-only the creature's pungent stench managed to reach her brain. Was this a dream? It had to be.

"What's your name?" She asked. It seemed to make sense.

"Leroy."

"Leroy," she parroted. They were going forward now, and Leroy was turned backward so he could reach to help her through the difficult turns. Leroy was incredibly silent in his movements for such an awkward looking thing.

"Where are we going?"

Leroy smiled again. "To Mama Tenenbaum's house. She told me to come and rescue you."

_Tenenbaum. Tenenbaum has sent a Splicer to rescue me._

The realization didn't connect, not one hundred percent. Right now, she only needed to either escape this hellish place or wake up from this hopeful dream. Leroy didn't seem to understand why she was so distracted and afraid.

"What's the matter, pretty lady? Don't you wanna meet Mama Tenenbaum?"

"I... I do, Leroy. Just get us out of here."

This had to be a dream. If Sasha didn't think that, she would have never followed this madman. Any moment now, she was going to wake up, safely back in her padded room and swaddled in her cozy straitjacket. Leroy was a figment of her imagination, created by her growing madness. A relic of this imaginary city from her imaginary past.

She kept thinking this while they slowly worked their way through the vents and across the building, right under the pillboxes' noses. Eventually, alarms began to go off, but by then they were so lost in the labyrinth of passages that it would take hours to find them.

All the while, Sasha only acknowledged the growing chaos with sleepy disinterest. That stopped very suddenly.

Barely awake, she was hit with a sudden rush of cool, fresh air and natural light. Leroy was pulling her onto the roof and into the night.

It was real. That was the first and only thought she could afford before all Hell broke loose.

Shots went off, rubber bullets whizzing within inches of their heads. Pillboxes were pouring out of every mouse hole in the building, shouting and waving flashlights, many of them still in their pajamas. A flare lit up the woods around them like a lightning bolt, blinding Sasha for a few seconds while Leroy scooped her up and loaded her onto his huge, bulging Spider's shoulders.

They went off like a rocket. Instantly, they were leaving the hospital far behind, flying thought the trees at a thousand miles per hour. Now real bullets were starting to fly, blasting apart tree limbs in showers of splinters. Flares ruined their cover, and the trees were even starting to burn. Jeeps were screaming though the forest below.

Instinct kept Sasha glued to her savior. Now she could only _wish _this was a dream.


	5. How Much is Enough?

They were running through Hell.

Fire leapt up and licked at their ankles, and snarling demons were chasing them in burning chariots. Darkness pressed in from in front, and chaos followed close behind. All Sasha could feel was the constant up and down of their advance, the drops in her stomach as they fell and rose. She wasn't even aware that she was still clinging for dear life; this was a dream, or they had truly died.

_BLAM!_

The whole world to their right erupted in a ball of fire, deafening her. Leroy's pace didn't falter. It seemed like hours before the pursuit slackened off, hours and hours of endless panic and desperate scrabbling to hold onto the edges of reality. The furor went on only in the back of Sasha's mind.

A crash. Flashlight beams sliced through the night sky, followed by angry shouting. The fires of Hell had died away, and now they were back in reality. Two jeeps were quickly disappearing into the distance, one split almost to its cab by a tree. Pillboxes were running around, watching them flee, cursing and fumbling for more flares.

Suddenly, silence.

In a moment, all was quiet in her world. Beautiful, blissful peace made her want to pass out right then, but the continuing movement kept her barely awake. Up, down. Leroy's shoulders shifted like the swells of water. She didn't know how she managed to hold on for so long.

Eventually the pace slackened, and there was a shock as they hit the solid ground. Leroy ran at a trot on all fours for another few minutes, still not saying anything, still not explaining what was happening. The only thing Sasha could do for many minutes was cling and breathe. Eventually, though, the world began to make sense again, and the sounds and sights of a real morning forest began to filter through.

Barely conscious, Sasha asked Leroy a question.

"Where are we going?"

At first, Leroy didn't answer. His breath was fast and heavy, and he was probably exhausted from the chase-not that Sasha could really remember the chase at all. They kept on moving for another ten minutes before he spoke.

"Back to Mama Tenenbaum's house. She told me to come get you after Brother Lester went crazy."

Another long silence. Sasha had her eyes open now, and saw that the sun was beginning to come up. Orange tinged the black winter sky, but it seemed to make the air even colder. Sasha realized then just _how _cold it was, especially with her just in a nightgown and without shoes; shivering, she pressed her eyes shut again, as if that would keep her warm.

Eventually, she fell asleep again, tired and unable to process what had just happened. Things used to be simple, she thought. It was as if there was a black mark on her now, attracting all sorts of strangeness and misfortune. Why couldn't she just have a day to only worry about things _real _people worry about? How long had it been since she had thought about taxes, or gas prices, or grocery shopping?

Not since Sydney died, at least.

Though she faded in and out of wakedness, Sasha gauged that they went on for another hour or so before reaching their goal. Leroy's trembling limbs brought them to a stop, and Sasha was afraid her rescuer was going to collapse and die right there. Poor Leroy. Already she had a fondness for him, even though she didn't fully understand how he existed, and beside the fact that he was shockingly hideous. Part of her still wasn't even sure if all of this was real. The cold that bit at her was real, the shots that had been fired at them had been real, and she certainly _felt _real enough.

"Pretty lady... are you alright?"

Leroy's voice broke into her thoughts. Now she realized that he had taken her off his shoulders and propped her up against a tree. Blood rushed to her head, making it ache. She opened her eyes, and saw him sitting in front of her, his head cocked to one side, a crooked smile on his ugly face.

"I'm... I'm fine," she said, her voice rough and dry like her aching throat. "Are you okay, Leroy?"

He stretched his long legs, and bent his spine backward like a dog, cracking joints audibly. Rolling onto his back, he extended his lanky arms while his feet hung in the air. "I think so," he said. "As good as I'll ever be."

Her savior was a Splicer. A huge, muscular, adult male Spider Splicer, with sharp fangs and curving, eagle like claws, was sitting only a foot from her, smiling like a fool and wanting to be her friend. An inky black, horribly long tongue that was forked at the end lolled out of his mouth while he panted like a puppy dog.

In Rapture, Spiders were the most feared creatures of all, even more than the towering Brute or the lumbering metal Daddy. Their stealth, grace and sheer ferocity made them infamous, though few people had even seen them up close and lived. During the wars, Ryan, Fontaine, and Lamb all engineered Spiders, from both willing volunteers and people just lifted off the street. Sometimes young men would be kidnapped by men claiming to be police, (or even the real police) and the next time their families saw them, they'd be crawling around on all fours through the gutter, feasting on corpses with a pack of other Spiders, snarling when approached.

Sasha was afraid of Spiders. At night during her time in the city, she had heard the sound of the creatures scrambling around in vents above her head. When she had gone to the grocery, she had seen Spiders lounging around in the rafters, grooming each other in animalistic rituals and whetting their sharp teeth on human bones. She had even seen one with a baby clinging to its chest, its own. The demonic child had lanky limbs and huge eyes.

"What are we waiting for?" She asked. Now that she was fully awake, Sasha found that she was very, very afraid.

"Mama Tenenbaum's sending Brother Jack in a truck to get us. Then, we go back to our house, and we can play games, and eat snacks, and be friends, right?" He said. He was nearly jumping up and down with excitement, that manic smile growing on his face. Leroy honestly only wanted her as a playmate.

"Sure."

Time passed, and Sasha did her best to hide her fear. Leroy went on and on about how happy he was to have a new friend, how they were going to play with his other friends, whoever they were, and how lovely he thought her hair was.

"You have pretty hair, too," she said, trying to appease him.

Blushing, Leroy put a hand in his scruffy black mop. It was long and greasy, with bald patches here and there. Bile rose in her throat when she saw black specks jumping away as he ran his hand over his head.

"Mama Tenenbaum says I'm her favorite," he giggled.

What a thing. Tenenbaum had a whole collection of Splicers now.

There was a commotion somewhere up ahead of them, and headlights broke through the dark of the early morning. Through the trees, they saw a black pickup truck pulling around on a dirt road. The ancient thing ground to a slow stop, rattling hoarsely as it shut down; air hissed out of the engine like it was dying. With a loud complaint, the driver's side door opened, and out stepped a man Sasha thought she'd never see again.

He was older now, but there was no denying it was him. Harsh, cruel black eyes darted back and forth in sunken sockets, a shaven head, large, veined hands with those crude tattoos, and a darkness surrounding him like an aura of possession. Jack was the killer, the monster that swept through Rapture like a plague and cut down their brothers and sisters effortlessly and without remorse.

Snorting, Jack blew a cloud of cigarette smoke out of his crooked mouth. He dropped the hand-rolled tobacco onto the ground and stamped it out with his huge boot, making sparks fly into the damp undergrowth. Those cold onyx eyes swept over the brush, and Sasha felt almost a physical blow when they settled on her.

"Brother Jack!" Leroy called out. He scrambled up and dashed over to Jack, stumbling and catching himself with his long arms. Circling him, Leroy looked up at him like a loyal dog, making the strange chirping, chattering noises that Spiders make. To Sasha's surprise, Jack smiled. Kneeling, he gave Leroy a pat on his flea-bitten head and scratched behind his ear, as if he really was just an overgrown, hideous puppy dog.

"Are you Jack?" Sasha asked. There was an edge in her voice.

Standing, the huge fellow did nothing but nod. The smile on Leroy's face vanished when he saw how tensely the two were staring at each other.

"Brother Jack can't talk," he said, "but he's really nice. You don't need to be scared."

Anger bit the back of Sasha's throat. Did she have a choice whether or not she went with this cold-blooded killer and his Spider friend? They've kidnapped her, dragged her out into the woods and made her into a fugitive from the law, all in Tenenbaum's name, for whatever reason. Sasha had hoped she had seen the last of the doctor and her experiments; sure, she was grateful for what Tenenbaum had done, taking her out of Rapture and offering her "cure" for ADAM sickness, but now she wanted all of Rapture's strangeness out of her life.

She didn't have a choice. There was no way she could hike any distance on her crippled leg, and she would freeze to death before the pillboxes found her. Right now, this was the only option where death wasn't a one-hundred percent chance.

With surprising gentleness, Jack helped her into the back seat of the truck, carefully holding her hand, which was tiny in his huge mitt. A little smile was on his ugly face, and some of Sasha's fear went away; there was such love and caring in his features, it defied how grim he looked from afar. Sasha didn't let her guard down. This man was a monster, more so than any person she had ever had to be in contact with.

Leroy jumped up into the seat from the other side, settling into the space next to her and curling into a ball. His oversize clothes bunched up around him, making him look small; how harmless he looked with his large claws tucked in under him and his black, decayed lips sheathing his giant fangs.

"Brother Jack's a very good driver," he noted cheerfully. "He's smart. I wish I could drive a car."

"That's nice," Sasha said quietly. "I can't drive a car, either."

Mute Jack stayed stoic as he climbed into the driver's seat. The old truck rumbled to life, and they started down the road.

So much to happen, even before breakfast.

###

In the city, snow was falling. Small, delicate flakes fluttered down, dusting the sidewalks and gathering on the hoods of parked cars. Gray slush choked the streets like blood clots, slowing traffic and being splattered by tires onto the unfortunates walking to work.

The city was bunkering down for a long, long winter, full of days like this. In a poor neighborhood on the edge of town, people were hammering boards over windows and dragging in firewood from the corner warehouses, preparing their homes for a looming snowstorm coming in from the Gulf. All day, the sky was dark and ominous.

Through the streets of New York, a black pickup drove slowly, a square-faced young man in the driver's seat. His eyes were baleful and wary, his body tense, keeping a vigil for police officers. Maybe he was just being paranoid. There was no way the law knew to look for his truck, or for him, and no one could see his passenger in the back seat. Still, an ounce of prevention: Jack was mute, but he wasn't stupid. Fontaine had seen to that, and programmed him to have the mind of a criminal.

Needing a distraction, Jack played with the radio until it settled on the news. Coverage of the Winter Olympics was steady and exciting, with the UK playing the Soviets in ice hockey. The fast-talking commentator paused from the game for a moment, his breath suddenly slow and nervous-with a quiet "oh," he said that another six people had been cut down by the "High Plains Werewolf Killer." Jack shut off the radio then.

Finally, they slid into an alleyway barely big enough for the truck, and pulled into a disused garage. With a clank, the beaten truck came to a halt, and steam rose from the hood; groaning, Jack realized that this would be the last time the truck would start.

_Note to self: Spring for something better than the $200 truck._

Laughing that deranged laugh, Leroy bounded out of the cab and turned feverent circles in place. Still, he didn't straighten or stand upright.

Sasha noticed this for the first time. Leroy's hands were very rough and calloused, and stained brown from dried blood, likely from the pine branches and jagged rocks of the forest. He used his hands to walk all the time, like an animal. The poor thing. The poor, poor thing. Seeing him wince in pain, fresh wounds opening back up in his blistered, paw-pad like palms, was heartbreaking for her.

She was lucky. When she looked at Leroy, she realized how incredibly fortunate she was that Tenenbaum was able to fix her back into something resembling a human being. Her new friend didn't have the luxury of a human appearance, for whatever reason, and was sentenced to life down on the ground, under everyone's feet. How on Earth did he stay so happy?

Jack helped her out of the truck, while Leroy sat expectantly at the garage door, his foot beating on the concrete. Sighing, Jack pulled up the door and held it for his charges.

"We can't be seen," said Leroy.

The huge man followed them out into the alley, keeping watch while Leroy led Sasha to a woodworm eaten door that was soaked by the humidity. Stumbling, Sasha tried her best not to hold up the group; maybe she was just trying to observe the silent, stoic golem leading them around. A cresent-shaped scar tore across his windpipe, still white and puffy, even though it had to be years old. In Rapture, that scar meant a man sentenced to a fate worse than death: someone about to be converted into a Big Daddy. How had that happened?

Inside the building, it was barely warmer than the outside. Rotten yellow wallpaper peeled and curled, filthy carpet squished under their feet, and buzzing green light bulbs cast strange shadows on the stained ceiling.

"We're here! We're home!" Leroy cheered, scrambling around their legs. "Mama Tenenbaum, we're back!"

Jack rolled his eyes, and unlocked one of the decrepit doors. Leroy dashed in, calling out for Tenenbaum, and crashed into someone standing near the doorway.

This young woman wasn't Tenenbaum. She was half the doctor's age, at about thirty, with ashy skin and short air. Her pretty features were horribly marred by splicing, from her bulging, filmed eyes, to her Glasgow grin, to the thick surgical cord running under the skin of her neck. A quaking hand went down to pet Leroy's flea-infested head, while the other was raised, wiggling its fingers.

"Hi," she squeaked.

Jack grunted a greeting, clapping a strong hand on her small shoulder. He gestured to Sasha, who was still milling in the hallway, nervous.

"Hi there, Sasha," the Splicer girl said. "Mama Tenenbaum's been waiting a long time to see you again."

Swallowing, Sasha stepped into the room and shook the girl's hand. She blushed, obviously not used to contact. Another poor, sad creature broken and torn apart by Rapture.

She led them into the apartment, which was very clean and pleasant compared to the rest of the building. Bookshelves, bleach white tile, fluffy chairs-comfortable things that looked like home. After only a few minutes, Leroy had leapt up onto a sofa and was asleep. Sasha only wanted to do the same.

"Mama Tenenbaum?" The girl called. There was a commotion behind a door coming off the living room, and a deep voice spat something that Sasha didn't understand. There was the sound of a drawer being slammed and something heavy falling to the floor, and the door opened.

Tenenbaum was a fierce-looking woman. Her cruel, pointed features and strong, severe jaw made her out to be worse than every teacher or cold mentor you ever had in your youth. She was a dragon of a woman, with a sharp tongue and little tolerance for nonsense. Even though Sasha had only known her for a short time, she had left an impression.

"Sasha," she said, her voice temperate and unreadable. "I see that our friend had brought you to us safely."

"What is this about, doctor?" Sasha asked, treading carefully.

There was a flash of something unfamiliar in Tenenbaum's blue eyes. Regret? Fear? It set Sasha on edge.

"It does not matter now," Tenenbaum said. "You are here and you are safe."

"You've kidnapped me, made me a fugitive, and you expect me to just settle into your little family?"

Tenenbaum sighed deeply, putting a hand over her eyes. Sasha was infuriated that she was such a burden to the woman, even though she was the one who brought her here. Why didn't she expect questions?

"You know about Brother Lester?" The Splicer girl asked Sasha. She nodded, remembering the headline on the newspapers.

The girl tried to say more, but Tenenbaum gave her a sharp look. Shrinking away, the girl was silenced.

"We will not trouble Sister Sasha with these things," the doctor snarled. "Until I have decided what we will do, we will not speak of it."

Indignant, Sasha stepped up to Tenenbaum and looked her straight in the eye. "I have a right to know! You people are insane! Why did you bring me here?"

Without flinching, Tenenbaum took the verbal abuse. That look of quiet disapproval didn't leave her cool face, as if she were being defied by an unruly child. Condescending and unsympathetic, the doctor had not changed a bit.

"It is because the project has failed," she said simply. "I have decided that the Splicers we have rescued are not adapting to surface life."

She explained that, even though Sasha's rehabilitation was a success, there were others that were not so fortunate. Some had died on the operating table at Doctor Porter's lab, others had simply not taken to the serum and remained disfigured, but not insane-like Leroy.

"Leroy was showing great promise. He recovered his speech, and was standing upright. But, it did not last. We were considering releasing him when he began to... regress," said Tenenbaum. Her eyes were beginning to redden. "Now he is nothing but an animal again."

"So you're keeping him as a pet?" Sasha asked, narrowing her eyes. Tenenbaum looked ashamed.

"Leroy cannot survive alone," she said quietly. "His mind is small, and his body is strong. There is nothing else he can do in this world beside remain here with us."

The Splicer girl chimed in. "Brother Leroy and Brother Jack are our protectors."

"Gloria," Tenenbaum said. "Do not interrupt."

A hurt look crossed little Gloria's face. "But you want to send them away, Mama Tenenbaum! Just because Brother Lester was bad, you want to send our family away to the bad place!"

There was silence. Sasha, Tenenbaum, Gloria and Jack all stared at each other, some shocked, some grim, some angry. Jack put his arm around Gloria, but she shrugged him off. Furious, the young woman stormed out of the room and slammed a door behind her. Sasha heard high, tiny sobs.

"What do you mean?" She asked quietly, turned away from the others. When there was no reply, she knew exactly what it meant: one of the psychopaths Tenenbaum had so valiantly ripped from Rapture had turned bad again, and now all of them were going to pay for it with their lives.

All of them were going back where they came from-and forgotten. Swept under the rug like so much household dust. Somehow, Tenenbaum had gotten them out of Rapture, and now she planned to take them back.

"You _can't _do this." Sasha barked, stepping up to Tenenbaum. Jack stood between them, a horrible, inhuman growl rumbling in his throat, making Sasha jump back in immediate, primal fear. Why Tenenbaum kept that beast around was totally beyond her; no amount of sweet smiles could ever change her memory of that growl.

"Until we can recapture Lester and study him, I fear it is our only option... unless you wish to return to the institution, and face the charges of your escape," Tenenbaum said gravely. "At any moment, you could turn on all of us, and so could Gloria, and even Leroy-but we knew he was a great risk, so we took precautions."

"Then take precautions!" Sasha snapped. "Look in my brains, flip some switches, give me some more of your magic cure! There's no way you're sending an old woman back to that place!"

"Does it look like my family can afford anything else?" Tenenbaum said, furrowing her dark brows. "Curing Splicers and paying for their rehabilitation has ruined us. Gloria and Leroy are the last ones we can support, and if they cannot be released, I fear we may starve on the street. We have three choices: institution, Rapture, or a bullet in the brain."

"Then let's catch him. If one of us has gone bad, then we can catch him."

It was a desperate gambit. Sasha didn't think she could contribute anything to finding this Lester, but if it bought her some time, she had to say it. Anything to stay out of Rapture. A bullet in the brain sounded wonderful compared to Rapture. Anything but Rapture. Anything but Rapture.

"I said I haven't decided yet," Tenenbaum said, turning back to her room. "It will take weeks of observation and study to determine your status. You best get comfortable."

Without another word, she shut the door and vanished. Sasha and Jack were alone.

Jack rubbed his temples, and his warped throat grumbled. Sasha stepped away from him, and he gave her a look of apology, soft and sweet again. He reached out with one of his meaty hands, but it fell to his side. His eyes were tired. Giving her that small, coy smile, he started down the adjacent hallway and disappeared behind the door opposite Gloria's.

Now it was only her. She felt upset at the fact that she didn't have a door to hide behind in this tense, angry house. Standing there, she was more alone in the world than she had even been in her life. To think that the closest thing she had to a friend was the man she had watched kill thousands of people with a blank stare or even a tiny smirk of vicious glee. This was the norm now, to find herself in these little pockets of darkness. Holes in her life where she didn't have anyone to support her, where she was totally on her own. How did she feel about that? More confused than anything, worried about the future. Worried about herself. Her situation was putting her in survival mode.

Taking her socks off, she sat on one of the soft couches next to the sleeping Leroy. She ripped off the hospital bracelet tight around her wrist and flicked it across the room. Being careful not to disturb the Spider, she reached around and turned off one of the lamps, and only one, so there was still a hazy yellow light painting shadows on the wooden walls and dark leather furniture. Sasha lied back, putting a pillow under her head and drawing a threadbare throw blanket around her shoulders.

The other corner of the blanket went around Leroy, who was shivering. As their family did, she gave the pathetic mutant a stroke on his wretched head. Be thankful, she thought. Be thankful you are not a pet. Be thankful you can remember where you were born, and who your parents are. Be thankful that you still have your shame and your pride. Be thankful that you can stand upright and act like a real person, and that you can think about more than food and affection. Be thankful you are not an animal.

As the quiet settled in, and the city began to tire, Sasha fell asleep. Falling into a deep, dreamless sleep, she rested off the stress and misery of the preceding day. She slept with one hand on her new friend's back, calmed by the up and down of his breathing. Knowing that she had just _one _person who definitely cared about her and would never leave her was the only comfort she had.

So maybe she wasn't truly alone.

**This chapter brought to you without commercial interruption. Also, I wish that Spider Splicers had been given more of an explanation. Why are they so vastly different and so feared by other Splicers? Especially in BioShock 2, where they barely resembled full human beings, and were something approaching animal/human hybrids. I think they're fascinating and pretty lovable. How scary can you be when you're voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, the man who played Van Von Hunter, Saskue, Ben Tennyson and the new Iceman in _Wolverine and the X-Men_? **


	6. Action and Exposition

_"In breaking news tonight, another victim has been taken in a series of slayings that some have attributed to occult activities. Twenty-one year old Christina Whitaker was home alone when, under unknown circumstances, the suspected "High Plains Werewolf Killer" murdered her close to midnight on Tuesday morning. _

_ Friends and family of Christina Walker say they first became concerned when she did not arrive at her place of work at the Smith and Boener Department Store yesterday morning. Later that day her father arrived at her Maple Avenue home to find her dead along with her two cats, which were mutilated in a similar fashion. _

_ As with the rest of the thirteen other murders that have shaken the nation over the past six weeks, she was found viciously attacked with most of her blood drained and missing several vital and non-vital organs. Police have declined to comment further on the nature of the murder or if they have concluded that this is indeed the work of the infamous serial killer._

_ Since early last month, the Werewolf Killer has stalked a line leading from the first killings in Chicago, those of Julian O'Brian, Joshua Aulds and Amber Baker, to this most recent slaying in Williamstown. Each killing is distinct in the both savage and surgical manner in which each victim has been dismembered. Gristly messages are often written in the victims blood, giving authorities reason to suspect cult activities may be to blame. Police say they have several suspects, but so far have been reluctant to release information. _

_ Amanda Aulds, sister of second victim Joshua Aulds, claims to have seen the suspect as he attacked her brother on January 19th. She and two other witnesses, who's identities have not been disclosed, gave reports describing the Werewolf Killer as, ironically, completely bald, and horribly deformed. He is said to have a large growth dominating the left side of his face, an egg-shaped, bulbous skull, and is missing most of his nose and upper lip. Police put his height and weight at six foot three and one-hundred and ten pounds, making him very tall and painfully thin. _

_ If you have any information about the killings, the FBI is taking tips twenty-four seven at this number... We now return you to regularly scheduled programming._

_###_

On the small black and white screen of the beaten-up, spill-damaged Sony, a rerun of _Saturday Night Live _flickered back somewhere near the middle. Brett cursed, thudding his hand on top of the TV, disturbing the picture.

Being a teenager, Brett didn't really pay attention to the news. News, no matter how exciting, was stupid and boring because it was news. At his job working the night shift at the FastMart, he needed distractions.

He got up, opening an orange soda and walking into the back room. It was eight o' clock on Wednesday, so there wasn't any business then and their hadn't been since sundown. Brett thought he could grab a few winks of sleep before the nightclub crowd stumbled in for their midnight coffee. It wasn't like he boss ever bothered to come in on weeknights; he had a life and a family, and was probably at home, watching that same rerun of _SNL _with his stupid pit bull and a hot TV dinner. Stupid boss.

In the storage room, Brett dragged his Sony and put it on a milk crate in front of a lawn chair he had snuck into the store a few days before. Adjusting the antenna, he sat and grinned, feeling clever. No one came in this time of night on a weekday, anyway.

Except for people who weren't locals. People just blowing through town.

Lester limped into the FastMart with what he now knew was a sprained ankle, wincing every time he took a step. He needed some aspirin and some food in his razor-thin body, anything to soothe his discomfort and make his life easier. Anything would do, but a warm bed and someone to tell him everything was okay was what he really, really wanted.

Shuffling on and off his injured leg, Lester pawed the shelves, looking almost desperately for what he needed. His spidery hand closed around a bottle of painkiller, and he let go of a breath. More relaxed, he pulled a jug of water from the shelf along with a bag of potato chips and some candy. As he gathered these things, he saw his own hand out in front of him, and it scared him; it was thin, transparent, and knobby, like some sort of alien bird's. His fingernails were long, sharp, and curved, and there was a rusty line of dried blood under the edge. He clenched his hand and buried it in the pocket of his thick hoodie.

His jacket didn't fit well. He had taken it from a laundromat in a town somewhere between where he was now and Chicago, along with the baggy pants, felt scarf, and tight, ugly dress shoes he was wearing. Then again, no normal clothes could fit him very well any more, with his bulging shoulders, wide hips and lanky limbs.

_Stop your whining. You're ugly. Get over it. _

Phineas's voice sounded like it was right in his ear. He could almost feel his hot, rancid breath on the side of his face, as if the creature was real, physical and very close.

Shut up, Phineas.

_You don't tell me anything. _

And he was right. Lester drew back from the conflict and didn't bother his alter-ego any longer. In the imaginary face of the bloodthirsty killer, Lester folded like a wet piece of paper. How stupid and small he felt, not standing up to someone who didn't even exist. Phineas controlled everything he did; he couldn't go where Phineas didn't want to go, and he could forget about trying to turn himself in or, as he had tried, suicide. When Phineas wasn't totally in control and forcing Lester down, he was still guiding every action like a master of puppets.

Pondering this made him think about what Phineas had done, and then he had to stop. If he wanted to stay sane, he had to stay numb.

Stumbling up to the counter, Lester dumped a handful of cash out of his hand and started out. No one had seen him, and he registered that as a good thing. Now he had to get out and away from the light and exposure of this public place.

"Hey, man. Anything else?"

He froze. The voice came from behind him, making shivers go up his spine. He considered bolting, but he was too afraid to run. Very slowly, he turned around and faced a smiling teenage boy, with tired eyes and rumpled hair, a dirty shirt and jeans on his portly frame. The boy held out a pack of chewing gum.

"You look kinda nervous," he said.

Swallowing, Lester tugged up the scarf covering his horribly disfigured face. "No, I'm fine. Thank you," he stuttered. This didn't change the boy's smile, but Lester saw something flicker in his dark eyes. Fear? His fear made Phineas stir in his dormancy, a wicked smile forming on the mental image Lester had of his face.

"Oh. Okay," the boy said. Slowly, he started into the back room again. Lester watched him, and he started to feel faint. Oh no. Please, please, not now. If you do one good thing in your life, Phineas, please spare this boy's life.

_But look at him, Lesty! Have you ever seen such a thing? He's so... _

No. No, Phineas. Please.

Darkness began to pry at the edges of Lester's vision as Phineas fought for control. In his pocket, that clawed hand began to writhe and twitch. He couldn't flee; the floor seemed to grab his feet and hold him there.

"Are... you okay?" The boy asked. Lester didn't turn around.

_Sure. I'm fine. How are you, boy-o?_

Phineas was hungry. Lester could feel it in the very pit of his soul. The creature inside him was anxious for the kill and wouldn't stay still for much longer.

"Run, kid," Lester managed to squeak. "Run."

He heard the boy take a step, but he didn't know if he was approaching or retreating. Every bit of his power went into fighting Phineas down, into giving himself a chance to run; he managed to fight in a couple of steps out into the cold night.

"Mister?"

The feeling of a hand on his shoulder made Lester break. He whipped around, still half-conscious and barely in control, and off came the scarf covering his monstrous face.

A scream, and a fist connected hard with Lester's empty left eye socket. He saw stars, and fell with a painful thud on his twisted ankle. Screeching like an animal, Phineas took control and lunged at the boy, slashing his raised arm with his claws. With a scream, the teenager backed up and had the presence of mind to slam the glass door behind him, stopping Phineas's charge.

For several seconds, Phineas pounded on the thick glass, baying like a wild animal and dragging his claws on the surface. On the other side, the teenage boy just stood there, his mouth open, his eyes as wide as a fish's. It went on for a long time, the two of them staring and waiting for the other to make a move; eventually, Phineas quieted and sank down on all fours, fixing the boy with a dangerous look. A smile carved across his horrible face, showing all of his long, pointy teeth.

"This glass won't keep me out forever, little gene slave," he said. A giggle escaped him, echoing in the cavern formed by the tall roof of the gas station outside. "I'm thinking about how you're going to taste."

Now his hood was down, and the boy could see his whole face and head. From the back of Phineas's mind, Lester quietly acknowledged that he was exposed.

Carefully, never taking his eyes off Phineas, the boy began to back away and slip behind the counter. This infuriated Phineas, and he started up screaming again. Long, harsh, keening screeches ripped through the quiet air of the sleepy neighborhood, sending birds flittering confused from their nests. Lester could feel how deep Phineas dug into their chest for all this air and all this _fury_, his throat strangled with mucus, his lungs full of acrid smoke. Sputum flew from his mouth onto the glass, crawling down it slowly like a living thing.

Headlights suddenly filled Phineas's vision, making him recoil with a hiss. A truck was pulling into the gas station, and its bewildered driver was leaning out of the cab. He heard the boy yelling from inside, and that's all he needed. Phineas was insane, but he wasn't stupid.

Like a jackrabbit, Phineas tore away from the light and noise of the gas station and into the darkness of some nearby woods. On all fours, he gained speed fast and kept it, even through the tangles and puddles of the scrubby borders of the New Jersey pine barrens. His four broad paws dodged over the vines easily and waded through mud without losing a single step. The light of the street grew farther and farther away.

Laughing, the Spider Splicer dashed up a tree and started swinging gracefully into the swamp. His burrow was close by, and they'd never find him there. Not even a bloodhound could follow his path through the trees and the thick bogs he was so comfortable with. In a few days, he would move on, just as any predator does, to a new territory to the south.

Back at the FastMart, Brett was still standing there. The driver of the truck was trying to get him to talk, but he couldn't move an inch. Still clamped in his sweaty hand was that red scarf from the lost and found at a Laundromat he visited often; he thought that he had even seen it once or twice.

He had looked into the one ugly yellow eye of the High Plains Werewolf Killer.

Right then, Brett resolved to watch the news more often.

###

It was light when Lester woke up. He was back in the dank, cool burrow Phineas had dug with his big claws in the loose soil around the base of a pine tree. Just like an animal, he was curled up in a tight ball, a dirty bone cradled in his arms, the ball joint gnawed by his sharp incisors. The taste of blood was in his mouth.

What have you done now, Phineas?

_Nothing. Don't get your panties in a bunch. I killed a possum after you made me chicken out at that gas station. _

Lester felt sick. Taking the bone between two fingers, he tossed it to the far side of the burrow. Even then, he still felt his gut twisting around the weight of Phineas's meal. He had eaten a _possum_. A dirty possum from the swamp. He was sleeping in a hole in the ground! How on Earth was this happening?

Of course, he knew why. Somewhere in his tired, tattered mind, Lester knew exactly what Phineas had been up to; he simply denied it for as long as he could. If he ignored it, if he pretended that this sort of lighthearted mischief was the only thing Phineas did during Lester's blackouts, he would be able to hold on to the last scraps of sanity he had left. So, in the end, Phineas won either way.

Groaning, Lester flipped on his back and tried to go back to sleep; the pain in his ankle and poorly-healed shoulder kept him from resting. His head couldn't rest on the ground because of the protruding, bony growth around his left eye socket, and his crooked body didn't like to bend the way he wanted to.

There was no more denying it. As hard as he tried, Lester couldn't hold back the racing train of thought straining to break into his consciousness.

Phineas was killing people.

_It took you this long to catch up with the news, Lester? _Phineas asked. In the landscape of his mind, Lester saw his alter-ego lounging on the ground, smiling whimsically.

Suddenly, they were together in the burrow. Lester knew he was hallucinating; maybe he had finally snapped. He could see his counterpart lying there, his slender head propped up on his calligraphy-brush fingers. A thick, inky tongue slid out of his mouth like a loathsome snake, and licked his single eyeball. Lester gagged.

_Don't act like that, Lesty. _Phineas said, grinning even wider. _Unlike you, I just do what's natural. You're in denial of your true nature. _

I'm not you. I'll never be you.

_Oh! _Phineas giggled. _Mister Hero thinks he's so much better than me! He's so pure and wonderful and I'm so evil and bad! That's a real lark, Lesty. That's a real lark._

_ You know, we are pretty different. I'm the one in charge, and you're the sniveling little underling. You serve me. I'm the one pulling your strings and there's nothing you can do about it. _

_ Doc Lamb told us that everyone's equal, but you and me? We're not equal. Just like me and all those infidels we've wiped off our new Earth aren't equal. _

So that was it. Phineas thought he was better than everyone else. Calmly, Lester realized that Phineas had killed _several _people now.

Why, Phineas? Why are you doing this to me?

An invisible eyebrow went up on Phineas's stiff face, but he continued to smile. _Do you really want to know, Lesty? Should I really break this nice little bubble you live in now?_

I have a life, Phineas. I _had _a life. Why do you want to hurt me? What did I ever do to you?

Phineas laughed. _You don't exist. You're not a person. You never had a life outside mine. In fact... I kind of fancied that Jackie of yours, too. She had a scent that I just _loved. _Did you sniff when you saw her? That was me. I had to drink in that smell... hmmm... like a fix. Like ADAM. _

Lester ignored how disgusting Phineas's pleasure was and asked him a question.

What is ADAM?

Very suddenly, Phineas's smile vanished, and a feral snarl formed on his rotted lips. He lifted himself with his arms, but Lester calmly reminded himself that Phineas wasn't real and he was only snarling at himself alone in this dark little hole. Lester was unafraid.

_You don't remember?_

No.

Turning away, Phineas started laughing again. He stretched, yawning, and scratched behind his ear with his foot in a horrible display of contortion. Lester swallowed when he realized that his own foot was clawing at his own ear in the same way, as if he was a mirror of the imaginary thing crouched next to him. Phineas was him as much as he was.

_Well, Lester... if you really want to know... I could tell you. But you don't want to know. If you want to keep a hold of yourself and keep living in this little fantasy world of yours, where everything is okay and I'm just some bad dream... you'll not ask anymore._

_ Okay. I'll tell you just to see the look on your face when your cute little reality snaps in half. _

Phineas's story didn't begin where Lester thought it would. Lounging on his back, he put his arms behind his head and recounted his childhood home.

He had been born in a house on the high desert of Arizona in 1924. His mother and father were dirt poor, and until he started going to school when he was ten, he had no idea how people outside the desert lived. His heavy-drinking father and his belt-wielding mother were an annoyance to him, so as soon as he was eighteen, he moved away to go to college on a scholarship.

The boy that Phineas was had a mind that impressed adults. He was a prodigy, with an intellect rivaling most of his teachers before he was in high school. Math was his passion, just as Lester's was, and his quick mind was totally confident and consumed with it's own ability. Always wanting to grow. Always wanting more. Phineas was gleeful in telling him about how he had visions of being surrounded by numbers, and how everything was made of numbers. He went between lucid and psychotic- his memory was muddled by the drugs he dabbled in during his first years at his first college.

By the time he was twenty, Phineas was accepted and transferred into Harvard. Among the bright minds there, he had flourished, living large in intellectual communities of students. He graduated four years later with a degree in theoretical physics, and moved on to more accomplishments in science and mathematics. His dream was tied to the huge, beautiful, whirring machines that did math he couldn't dream of within seconds. Difference engines, computers.

The letter had come on no particular occasion. Phineas had been sitting in his apartment, sipping his morning coffee, when he opened it and saw it was from Andrew Ryan.

The name pinged hard against Lester's psyche, for whatever reason.

Ryan's letter had been an invitation. An invitation to come along with him to a gulch he had built in Iceland. At first, Phineas had laughed at such a ludicrous idea- then his colleagues began disappearing. One by one, the brightest minds he knew vanished, often without a trace. They'd take one suitcase and some valuables, but nothing else. At least one of them had told him about the letters they had received. Phineas said that instead of concern, he had been consumed by burning jealousy.

Rapture. How beautiful Rapture was.

The city beneath the sea was like a place out of a dream, a foggy painting of one of Phineas's drug-induced fantasies. Great, glowing towers and pulsing neon, glittering bronze bathyspheres and shimmering fish. The halls of the city were plush, only for the greatest of all humanity. The people Phineas knew he belonged with.

Phineas found his place in the city immediately. The scientific community accepted him with open arms, drinking up every word he said in every rambling paper he published. People gathered to hear him speak at the many conventions and celebrations of knowledge the city held. Andrew Ryan himself was very often in attendance.

For years, Rapture gave Phineas the perfect life. He didn't really care about the amount of money he made; he only cared about how people felt about him and his powerful mind. As long as he had his office in Minerva's Den, the great computing hub of the city, he was happy. Sometimes he slept in his office, lulled by the sound of his beloved machines humming and working long into the night, smiling when he thought about how the punch cards running them eternally had his name written on them: _Phineas Hull, programmer. _

It was better than having his name in lights.

But life in Rapture didn't last.

Here, Phineas stopped. The mirage lying before Lester had his twisted hand over his eye, and he was shaking violently.

He said that one of the people he trusted had betrayed him in a way that destroyed everything he had. Reed Wahl, the director of Rapture Central Computing and one of the only men Phineas admired.

Wahl was a great man. A computer genius and a brilliant leader, he was one of Rapture's brightest. Phineas looked up to him, but it was with envious eyes, and eventually, that began to erode their relationship- especially with the advent of ADAM.

ADAM, ADAM, ADAM... the word licked off Phineas's tongue like he could taste it; he relished it with a crazed grin on his face. ADAM had been Rapture's waxen wings, a discovery that could change the world as Lester knew it, but not for the better. From what his maddened counterpart said, ADAM was something consumed, like the drugs he had still depended on, even in his greatest years. ADAM could do anything, and ADAM destroyed the Utopia under the frozen northern sea.

Lester didn't understand what exactly ADAM was, but Phineas talked about it like it was some sort of glorious, delicious cake. Except this cake had properties that defied reality, properties that didn't make sense. He said that it gave people amazing superpowers and made them beautiful beyond human possibility, then in the next breath, he'd curse it, screaming about the maddening hunger for it that consumed him and everyone in the city. Lester felt a strange sensation in his stomach whenever the word was used.

ADAM made people insane. It made Phineas insane, and it made Reed Wahl insane. Wahl was the first to act on it.

Paranoid and unstable, Wahl had begun suspecting his closest friends of conspiracies against him. For hours, Wahl had locked himself in his office, and through the walls Phineas could hear him ranting and raving to his great computer, The Thinker. He was afraid his friends were planning to steal The Thinker, that they were plotting against him the whole time. So Wahl had hatched an idea.

The next thing Phineas knew, he was being hauled away from his apartment at three AM by twenty armed members of Ryan's secret police. He was being charged of high treason, a crime not rewarded by any trial, plea, or negotiations- only a one-way trip to Persephone Penal Colony.

_Wahl told Andrew Ryan that I was in a plot to take over the center of computing. _Phineas said. His face was blank, and his eye was looking past Lester, somewhere in the distance to something Lester couldn't see.

_So I went to the penal colony outside the city for six years. Do you remember what they did to me?_

No.

_Persephone was a place where nobody could tell anybody about anything. Ryan could do whatever he wanted with the people he put there. He liked to test his new Plasmids on them._

_ People were afraid of going to Persephone because that's where they made people into Big Daddies. _He went on. Lester didn't know what a Big Daddy was, but he didn't ask.

_Those people never went to Persephone. I _wish _they made me a metal Daddy. I know that's the very _best _thing that can happen to you there, short of dying. _

_ But I'm not going to tell you about Persephone. There's no way I can put that into words. Enough telling. I'm going to _show _you. _

There was a huge flash of light, and Lester felt the bottom fall out of his stomach, as if he was falling- falling, falling into a blinding white pit. He was twisting in the void, trying to find which was was up, but he had no body. It was a dream while he was fully awake and aware.

THUD!

Like a physical blow, the ground came up to meet him with a smack. Very suddenly, everything was totally silent and still. No longer was Lester in his warm, moist burrow in the swamp; he was in a world of ice and steel and quiet.

_Welcome to Rapture, Lesty._

Lester hefted himself up onto his elbows, the dream thick and heavy around his ears. In the back of his head, he could feel the tension of Phineas's concentration, his straining to keep the hallucination solid. It felt very, very real.

He was in a tiny cage. Not a cell, but a cage. It was only six by four, but tall enough for him to stand up, if he had the strength to. It was like a kennel. There wasn't anything in the kennel except for himself and a puddle of water from a leak in the ceiling. It was cold. He was shivering. And he wasn't himself.

A pair of much shorter, stubbier arms was holding him up, with tan, healthy skin and normal fingernails. A hand went up to his face, and he only felt normal, soft flesh; the growth over his left eye was gone, and he had a nose again. He had a nose! If he hadn't been so terrified, he would have been overjoyed.

_This is what I was like before._ Phineas said in his mind. _I was handsome. _

Around him, as Lester's dream became more vivid, he found a place of terrible suffering. There was an acrid stench of ammonia in the air, mixing with the stench of rotting flesh and unwashed bodies. The foul air was buzzing with constant, grating noise; groaning, screaming, and raving human voices, and sounds that had to be animals being tortured- there was no way human beings were making those sounds. Looking outside the bars, Lester found he was surrounded by hundreds of other kennels down a long concrete hallway, a miserable pair of eyes looking back at him from each one.

These creatures... these were Splicers. Lester knew them from his nightmares. They had hideous faces, swollen and sallow, with decaying teeth and marble-like eyes. Few had hair. Misshapen hands gripped the bars of their cages limply, the steel being the only thing holding the creatures up.

A man in a white coat walked by; in each cage, he dropped a bucket from a cart he was pulling and continued on. When he got to Lester's cage, Lester saw a familiar face- another from his nightmares. This fellow had a high hairline, and tiny, half-moon glasses. His pudgy face exuded evil.

With one doughy hand, the man checked a card tied to the cage door. Turning, he selected a rusty metal pail from the cart, opened the door, and dropped the pail in front of him, slinging horrid-smelling slop all over the floor.

"Eat," the man said, frowning. "You're getting thin. You won't survive the transition unless you put on weight."

With that, he walked on.

The contents of the pail were a pale tan color, and stunk with fish and entrails. Sniffing, Lester looked into the liquid and saw a piece of intestine bob to the surface and sink again.

_I ate this every day. _Phineas said. _Let's see how you like it. _

Darkness seized the corners of Lester's vision, and he was thrown backward by a huge force. The dream began to dissolve around him as the stench of the prison grew and swelled and pushed into his face. His heart hammered in his ears and tears stung his eyes as he pulled himself in a ball, pleading for Phineas to stop. When he looked, praying to see the horrors gone, he saw a huge, slimy tentacle rising from the bucket and surging forth to grab him.

In an instant, he was somewhere else entirely. Lester found he couldn't move. His hands and feet were tied down, and he was pinned to a cold steel table. A huge, blinding light filled his vision from above, and for a moment he thought he was dead.

"Ready the specimen," a voice said. Lester strained to turn and look; on one side of him, he saw some more people in lab coats standing around, acting very casual. Some were smiling and laughing.

There was another table beyond them. On it, Lester saw another body strapped down, unconscious. It was something he had only seen on television: a huge, hairy beast of magnificent beauty that Phineas's vision seemed to accentuate. A massive black panther, from the darkest jungles of India, was sleeping peacefully there. Like Bagheera of _The Jungle Book_, he seemed to do so out of tameness, and had an air of peace and good.

A man stepped out from between two of the scientists. A rim of black hair covered his head, and two sharp eyes commanded his peons with harshness. A pencil-thin mustache sat on his lip like a worm.

"Let's get this over with," he said.

Without further banter, the team went about their task. A few went to Lester, and a few went to the panther. While Lester watched what they were doing to the cat, a needle slid into his arm, and his world exploded with pain.

Screaming, Lester thrashed violently, his eyes wide with terror. At the same time, the panther began to screech and roar, whipping its body at the people holding it down. More rushed in to control it, and more hands came down on Lester as well. Slowly, everything went black. With the last moments of sight he had, Lester saw the white coats linking tubes up to huge machines; one or two tubes didn't seem to go anywhere- until Lester saw that they went directly from the cat to an IV in his arm.

From here, the dream became indistinct. Blips of sound and shifting images went by him, some horrific, some even pleasant. The surgeries were the worst part: he'd be fully conscious while scientists took things out and put things in, injecting strange fluids and linking him by more machines to different creatures- tigers, baboons, Komodo dragons, eagles. Words like "hybridize," "Spider," and "war" floated around in the mist.

Some images were nice. His life from there seemed to get easier and easier; people tossed him bits of tender, better-tasting food, (_raw meat, _whispered Phineas) they played simple games with him, like catch and something with a fluffy thing tied to a string on a stick. In some little dreams, he saw the panther. Its big, fluffy body bowled him over, its rough tongue licking his face. He'd play with his panther friend Bagheera in a huge, white room, wrestling and batting a ball back and forth.

Then, in the next scene, the panther was dead. Blood was pouring from his neck, and one of the... creatures... Splicers... whatever... was standing over him, drinking the life that was pumping from his wound. That creature drinking his only friend's blood had snapped Phineas's wits.

_They took everything from me. _Phineas said. His voice was barely a whisper. _They took my freedom, my dignity... my humanity. They locked me up for six years and made me their living weapon. Selfish, wicked gene slaves... but Doc Lamb... she saved me. She gave me a new purpose in my life._

The world shifted. Now Lester was in a huge, metal room, lit softly by dripping candles made of fat. Rickety pews were lined up in front of a massive altar crowned with a looming image of a woman in flowing white gowns, a gentle smile on her serene face. Lester couldn't move- he couldn't flee from the gathering of horrid, decaying creatures surrounding him, some grinning with skeletal jaws exposed, others weeping uncontrollably. Splicers.

"My Children!" Bellowed a dark, raspy voice. Up on the altar, a man was standing, casting a massive shadow on the painting behind him. A wide-brimmed hat hid his face, and a volumeous brown robe swallowed him like a monk's. Two yellow eyes sat in black sockets, shimmering wickedly in the candlelight.

"I have received a prophecy from the Lamb!" He yelled. The crowd suddenly became deathly quiet.

"She speaks of a new age... an age of glory for our family! She tells us that we must storm to the surface!"

A rusty cheer rose from the shambling hoard, fists pumping the air weakly. In the shadow of his hat, Lester saw the man smiling triumphantly.

"If we are to bring Utopia to Earth," he went on, "we must take what we need from the bountiful, sunlit world above! We must convert the ignorant masses to the truth, as passed down to us by God!"

Another cry, and some of the Splicers stood, whooping and hollering like wild hunters. Lester saw that some of them were like him, with lanky limbs and heavy claws.

"The infidels will be undone by our righteous efforts! The Lamb will lead us to victory!"

Now the preacher was standing up on his pulpit, and Lester saw that he was a Spider as well. A crooked talon gripped a water-logged Bible, and a razor-toothed mouth foamed like a rabid dog's as he spoke, his words getting faster and more frantic with each second. Lester's heart pounded in his ears.

"Death to the surface-dwellers!"

"HEAR HEAR!" Shouted the crowd.

"Glory to the Lamb!"

"HEAR HEAR!"

"Glory to the Sacred Daughter!"

"HEAR HEAR!"

"Glory to the Rapture Family!"

"HEAR HEAR!"

The rally ended with the fiery speaker falling down from his pedestal, as if he had been in a trance. While some of the parishioners ran to help him, others around Lester began to chatter excitedly.

"Father Wales really can give a sermon, can't he, Phineas?"

Lester didn't react, not knowing he was being addressed. He kept trying to peer over the crowd to see what had happened to the preacher. A hand shook his shoulder, and he turned.

A face out of the deepest, darkest pit stared back a him with a friendly grin. Rotting teeth hung in black gums, and thin hair plastered to wrinkled, slimy skin. Rancid breath hit Lester in the face, clear, real, and very un-dream-like.

"Phineas?Are you alright?" The creature asked.

He woke up.

With a gasp, Lester came awake, and the creature was gone. He was out of Rapture, out of the pit, out of the black mass in Father Wales's church of the damned. He was curled up in a tight ball, his teeth on his white knuckles, safe in his burrow in the swamp. Tears made his face hot and sticky, and sweat ran down his bald head. Phineas was not there, but he could still feel his cold presence in his mind.

_So you see? That's why I do what I do. Why don't you come over to my way of thinking? _Phineas said. In Lester's mind, he could see him with an almost sympathetic look on his face, supplanting him.

No. Never.

_Have it your way._

The world went totally black for Lester. Phineas took control of their body in one small burst of effort, shoving his alter-ego to the very bottom of a deep, dark shaft in their collective mind.

Stretching, Phineas settled back into the soft earth and fell asleep. He licked his chops as he thought off all the atrocities he planned to commit on the next new moon. Under the cover of darkness, he had all the power he needed over frightened surface dwellers: he was an unstoppable plague, a force that could be seen and heard, but not touched.

He dreamed a dream of bloodshed.

###

A warm sun set over Mount Carmel, South Carolina. Spring was still far away, but in the marshes, air rose off the Atlantic and made the air thick and hot during the day. People cranked up the A/C and ignored it, except when the fog made travel difficult.

A car was crashed into a tree deep in the woods outside the tiny town. Its radiator smoked, pouring out fumes and sparking with tiny gouts of flame. The shattered windshield was strewn all over the dirt road, making David Rattigan very thankful that he was unhurt.

The thick fog had hidden the sides of the road, and he had crashed his car on the dark, black night. Now he was stranded, with no way to get back to town except by a long, cold, wet walk. He sighed and sat down up against a tree, nursing a cut on his right arm. Blood dripped down, staining his tan slacks.

That fog was about to do him another unkindness tonight.

It loved the scent of his blood, hugging it and carrying for miles. The smell wound through the misty bogs to an abandoned shed in the deepest part of the woods.

A jet black tongue flicked snakelike the air, catching the smell of a teaspoon of blood two miles away. Two shiny golden eyes opened, and a smile of razor-sharp teeth appeared.

Through the trees, a white shape began to surge at incredible speeds. Silent, agile, and deadly, like a heat seeking missile. Those shimmering yellow eyes focused on the light of a flashlight up ahead, and the smile grew even wider.

Rattigan swung his flashlight into the woods, nervous. He had heard a sound out in the darkness, and something in the back of his head whispered _mountain lion_. A stranger to this marshy, hilly country, he knew more about rocket science than staying alive until someone found him.

Eyes settled on him and his wrecked car. They focused on the blood dripping from his arm, and that black tongue wicked across long teeth. A grumble came from an empty stomach. Tonight, he was hungry for revenge. Any revenge. This fellow happened to look like the doctor who had given him his spinal cord injections.

Sighing, Rattigan stood up and started walking toward the faint glow of the town in the distance. It would take an hour to get through the bogs and the muddy dirt roads- and who knows was was out there. He gripped a heavy stick he had pulled off a mangrove tree.

_SCRAAAAWWWWW!_

Phineas leapt onto the man's back, moving to sink his fangs into the back of his neck. He missed, biting his shoulder instead. Rattigan screamed, trying to beat off his attacker with his staff, but not fazing him. Slashing claws came down on Rattigan's throat, and blood spilled onto the ground.

"FOR THE FAMILY!"

Another swipe across his target's chest.

"FOR THE LAMB!"

A deadly kick with a two-jointed leg.

"FOR RAPTURE!"

A rush of endorphins rewarded Phineas as he approached his disabled prey, who was lying prone on the ground, trembling. His eyes were wide with fear.

"Please!" He begged. "I have children! Be a human being!"

"I'M NOT HUMAN!" Phineas screeched. He reared up, ready to deliver a fatal blow.

_CRACK!_

That tree limb smacked Phineas across the face, knocking him backward. Rattigan stood, and the branch came down on Phineas over and over and over again. His jaw came close to breaking, but before it did he turned and backed away. Hissing, he displayed his horrid black mouth like a Mamba. The shock made Rattigan stumble, and the instant he fell backward, Phineas was on him. Screaming and struggling, they tumbled down the hill and into a dale.

The struggle ended. Rattigan was still. Phineas propped himself up, smiling wickedly with bloody fangs.

Deep inside, Lester came just barely conscious. His vision flicked back on, and the first thing he saw was a blood-soaked shirt. He thought, for a second, that he should just go back to sleep, and not interrupt Phineas's kill. But he had already done enough.

For a second, just a second, Phineas was distracted with pushing him back down. That one second was enough to make him loose interest in the limp body in front of him. Lester could take control and ruin the ritual; they could be discovered.

So Phineas ran off, back to his new home in a hole in a Spanish-moss eaten tree, leaving the body of David Rattigan in the grassy dale.

###

_In other news today, a man has come forward, claiming to have survived an attack by the suspected High Plains Werewolf Killer. _

_ Thirty-five year old David Rattigan of High Plains, Ohio was driving through McCormick County when his car crashed into a tree. Rattigan claims that while walking to Mount Carmel, he was assaulted by the suspected serial killer and managed to escape to a nearby ranger's station. He was treated for several severe lacerations, including bite wounds, and a cracked rib he says came from when the killer kicked him in the chest with superhuman strength. _

_Earlier tonight, Rattigan came very close to bleeding to death, but is now in stable condition._

_ Police are now very concerned with the possibility that the killer is in the area. They are asking citizens to stay alert, lock their doors and to not go out at night alone. Because the killer is known to follow his victims to their homes, citizens are advised to travel in carpools and to avoid travel altogether at night in rural areas._

_ The FBI is asking that anyone with any information call this number..._

_ And now back to your regularly scheduled programming._


End file.
